Associate and Retired Members of PCS

If you are leaving the Agency and wish to remain an Associate or Retired Member of PCS please use the form at this link: http://www.pcs.org.uk/en/about_pcs/associate_and_retired_members/index.cfm

Ministry of Defence spent £290m on consultants last year

MoD criticised for failing to look in-house for technical expertise while pressing ahead with 60,000 job cuts, says todays Guardian

The Ministry of Defence spent £290m on specialist consultants last year while making thousands of military and civilian personnel redundant, new figures show.

The money was drawn from the MoD's equipment budget, which is supposed to pay for the weapons, armour and vehicles the military needs in Afghanistan and for other operations.
Last November the Guardian revealed that MoD spending on outside contractors had risen fiftyfold in four years – from £6m in 2006 to a high of £297m in the financial year 2009/2010.
A confidential internal audit last year found the system for awarding contracts was being routinely abused. When the report was leaked to the Guardian, ministers promised to stamp out bad practice to bring the budget under control.

But the latest figures appear to show continued high spending during the first full year of the coalition government at a time when the military has been pressing ahead with a redundancy programme that will eventually result in 60,000 troops and civilians being forced out.

The number of firms commissioned by the MoD for technical consultancy and support work has also ballooned from a handful to 380, prompting unions to express fears the department's redundancy programme is self-defeating. They said it is cutting too far and too fast, forcing senior managers to rely on expensive consultants, some of whom will have worked for the MoD before being taken on by private companies.

"One of the effects of these cuts is that expenditure actually increases as the MoD has to pay consultants to do the work of those leaving the department," said Steve Jary, national secretary of Prospect, a union representing MoD civil servants.

Last week the parliamentary spending watchdog, the National Audit Office, warned the MoD had been in such a hurry to start cutting jobs, it was in grave danger of losing hundreds of in-house specialists it might never be able to replace.

At issue is the money spent by the MoD under a regime called Fats – Framework Agreement for Technical Support. Introduced by Labour in April 2009, this allowed senior defence officials to hire specialist, short-term help for "niche" tasks without needing authorisation from a minister. The aim was to speed-up work on the MoD's large, delay-prone procurement projects by making it easier for managers to hire "highly technical" experts in certain fields if none existed in the department.

However, last year's confidential audit showed project managers weren't bothering to look in-house before bringing outsiders on board. It highlighted numerous flaws and rule-breaking, and warned control of the MoD purse appeared to be "poorly developed or non-existent". The report said there were weaknesses in the robustness of scrutiny by those in charge of the budget, and found that in 75% of cases, contracts were awarded without any kind of competition.

Philip Hammond, the defence secretary, blamed Labour's poor governance for the spiralling costs, but the spending has continued in the last 18 months. The latest figures show the department spent £290m on Fats contracts between January and December last year.
The government insisted it could not provide a breakdown of the costs, but said the department had spent £225m between April and December last year – £5m less than the year before, a fall of 2%.

Jary said the latest figures showed the department was being forced to hire outside firms because it was losing too many of its own experts. "Prospect has been highlighting the impact of the MoD's savage cuts in its specialist staff for years. The Commons defence committee, the public accounts committee and the National Audit Office have all underlined this in recent weeks.
"Two weeks ago, we said the MoD is heading for a cliff-edge. It is now clear that the accelerator is jammed on full-speed and the driver can't see through the windscreen. Unfortunately, the brake-man has been made redundant."

The MoD insisted spending was coming down, and said it had also reduced the money spent on management consultants, which is supposed to come from a separate budget and still requires ministerial approval. Ministers say they have tightened up the rules for Fats and that these will come into effect in April.

"Fats spending has reduced in recent years and spending on management consultancy has also been reduced by from £106m under the last government to £26m over the last year," a spokesman said. "Fats is not the same as management consultancy, it is external technical services providing essential expertise such as independent airworthiness certification that our civil servants cannot provide.

"In many cases we are required to obtain independent advice on the adequacy of safety management arrangements and audit of safety related material for complex weapons. Since July 2010 governance and approval processes for Fats have been improved following an audit and from April a new framework will ensure external technical support services are used even more efficiently."

Moira Stewart can avoid top income tax rate through her own private company

The BBC newsreader Moira Stuart, has set up a private firm that allows her to avoid the 50% top rate of tax on some of her income.

The revelation came as the foreign secretary, William Hague, became the first senior cabinet minister to condemn the practice of setting up companies through which to siphon salaries.

The Guardian revealed last week that as many as 25 full-time NHS staff, most on contracts as long as five years, are paid through companies owned by their families. Many were earning well over £100,000 a year. The department of health says it is investigating the position and whether the staff will be allowed to go on the payroll, and the Treasury is undertaking a wider review across Whitehall due to be completed by the end of March.

The device allows individuals to pay as little as 21% corporation tax, rather than the higher rate of 40% or top rate of 50%. Labour has been reluctant to challenge the practice in the NHS since it knows many of the agreements were cleared under the last Labour government.

Read more here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2012/feb/19/moira-stewart-tax-private-company

'Suspend millionaire back to work tsar'

MPs demand Cameron acts after police probe job placements that last just ONE DAY

David Cameron is facing demands to suspend his 'back to work' tsar Emma Harrison after police launched a fraud inquiry.

A senior MP will today table a parliamentary question asking if he will block the A4e company's contracts.

Mrs Harrison, appointed to help problem families find jobs, caused uproar this month when it was revealed she had paid herself £8.6million of mainly taxpayers' cash.

On Friday, detectives visited her company A4e's offices amid claims that it took funding for putting some clients back to work for only a day.

Whitehall sources say ministers are demanding urgent reassurance there is no 'systematic fraud' designed to rip off the taxpayer.Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2103522/Suspend-work-tsar-MPs-demand-action-fraud-probe-job-placement-scheme.html#ixzz1muqDr2Zh

Meanwhile we are all in this together?

Department of Health apologises over tax deals

Andrew Lansley faces questions after leaked emails reveal at least 25 senior staff have salaries paid to companies

The Department of Health has apologised after documents sent to the Guardian showed that contrary to assurances given to parliament, more than 25 senior staff employed by the department are paid salaries direct to limited companies, with the likely effect of reducing their tax bills.

In some cases, the documents show the named individuals are being paid more than £250,000 a year, as well as additional expenses. The payments amount to almost £4.2m in one year.

The department claimed the 25 were not civil servants, or technically even staff, although a large number have been employed by the department for many years and hold very senior positions. It said the arrangements will be subject to review by the Treasury.

One Whitehall source said: "We cannot defend these arrangements, but it may be it is very common in Whitehall and this is just the tip of an iceberg."

Read more here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2012/feb/15/department-of-health-tax-deals-misunderstanding

COMMENT: We wonder how one can be employed by a department for many years in senior positions on 6 figure salaries, with tax avoidance as a given, and yet not be either civil servants, or technically even staff? It seems that only a very select few "are in this together"... and the rest of us are in the brown stuff!

PCS to consult on further pensions action

Senior elected representatives of the largest union in the civil service, PCS, today (9th February) unanimously agreed to consult members over continued campaigning against the government's cuts to public sector pensions.

The union's national executive council decided to hold a consultative ballot of 250,000 public sector members on the campaign, which could include further co-ordinated strikes and industrial action with other unions in education and the civil service.

The ballot - in which members will be able to vote by post, online or by phone - will be held in late February and early March, with a possible date for another co-ordinated strike on 28 March, followed by a rolling programme of industrial action, joint union protests and political campaigning.

At its previous meeting in January the union's NEC unanimously agreed to reject the government's latest offer on pensions, as it would still force public servants to work longer for a worse pension in retirement, and to pay more in contributions with the money going straight to the Treasury to pay off a budget deficit caused by the failures of bankers and successive governments.

The NEC also confirmed the union will continue to attend talks with the government, after ministers were forced to backtrack over their stated aim of excluding PCS from future discussions.

So far ministers have refused to hold genuine negotiations on the core issues of the pension age, contributions and the inflation indexation that affects the value of pensions.

The government's proposed changes to pensions are being driven by a desire to privatise more public sector jobs, the union says. This was acknowledged by Treasury minister Danny Alexander in December when he told the Commons the plans would make pensions "substantially more affordable to alternative providers".

The union will continue to campaign for fair pensions for public and private sector workers and will seek to work with private sector unions campaigning against cuts to their retirement incomes, such as those representing staff in Unilever.

PCS general secretary Mark Serwotka said: "We refuse to accept that civil servants, nurses, teachers and council workers should be bullied into paying more and working longer for less, just to pay off debts racked up by greedy bankers who are still pocketing their bonuses.

"We will now consult members on a new programme of action and will be talking to other unions about the next wave of our campaign."

MoD criticised for £6bn overspend on big defence projects

Ministry's 'culture of over optimism' to blame for underestimating cost of 15 projects as well as delays, says committee of MPs (Guardian, Friday 10th February)

Britain's 15 biggest defence projects are expected to cost £6bn more than first estimated and will be delayed by a combined total of 26 years, a parliamentary watchdog reports today.

Too often the taxpayer has had to pick up the bill for the Ministry of Defence underestimating the risks involved in procuring complex weapons systems, the Commons public accounts committee (PAC) says.

The committee identifies three large projects bedevilled by long delays and huge overspend. These include the repeatedly delayed Nimrod maritime patrol aircraft, upon which £3.4bn was spent before it was scrapped, to save an estimated £1.9bn in running costs over the next 10 years.

The MoD will incur further costs from cancelling contracts and substituting alternative capabilities. The committee has asked the National Audit Office to investigate the decision to scrap Nimrod aircraft as well as all of Britain's Harrier jump-jets.

It also wants investigation of the delays surrounding the nuclear-powered Astute submarine fleet, which led to an extra £1.9bn in costs, and of the expenditure on two large aircraft carriers, the cost of which has so far risen by £2.8bn over the £3.5bn estimated when first approved in 2008. The PAC believes the carriers could end up costing as much as £12bn.

The report says that hurried attempts to save money have created problems for the future. "Decisions to save cash in the short term – deferring spending and reducing equipment numbers – have added significant long-term costs to the defence programme, and so represent poor value for money," it says.

It adds that last year's strategic defence and security review had to address the £42bn gap between the defence budget and forecast expenditure, including spending on the equipment programme. Since then there have been two more reviews, which have made further cuts in that programme in attempt to save further money.

Despite three reviews, Friday's report says, the MoD can say only that the defence budget is "broadly in balance".

The MPs comment: "It is unacceptable that the department still cannot identify the extent of the current gap between resources and expenditure."

They add that a culture of over-optimism continues at the ministry when it comes to costing projects. They point out that the financial burden incurred by underestimating project costs has fallen mainly on taxpayers, who have had to underwrite them.

The forecast for completion of the 15 largest defence projects increased by £466m last year alone.

Since the projects were first approved their estimated costs have risen by £6.1bn, bringing the combined total to about £60bn. Together, the projects are expected to be completed 322 months later than planned.

The PAC says the MoD's performance has improved, and that recent projects have had lower cost increases and fewer technical problems than earlier ones.

Today's report also points out that cutting equipment numbers after contracts have been signed usually represents poor value for money, as it invariably increases unit costs.

The MoD has recently decided to reduce the number of Puma and Chinook helicopters by four and 10 respectively, and it is buying three fewer European A400M transport aircraft. This reportedly has contributed to a 46% increase in the cost of each A400M plane.

Margaret Hodge MP, the Labour chair of the PAC, said: "Decisions to delay or cut programmes to save money in the short term continue to lead to increased costs in the longer term and do not represent good value for money."

She added: "We welcome the fact that there are signs of improvement. Projects approved since 2002 have shown significantly lower cost increases."

However, she said, the committee was concerned that the MoD was still unable to set out openly the extent of the gap between its income and expenditure, and how and by when it would balance this year's budget. "The department must publish that information urgently."

The MPs say that in light of current economic conditions it would be unrealistic for the MoD to plan spending on the assumption it will get a 1% increase in its equipment budget after 2015‚ a factor defence chiefs had been demanding.

David Cameron's apponted 'families champion' pockets £8.6 million

Of (mostly) public money for operating schemes that promised to get long-term unemployed back to work and that have had an abysmal track record of failure.

Emma Harrison (left) is 'Call me Dave's' 'families champion' . She has this year paid herself an £8.6 million dividend out her company A4E that is almost entirely dependent upon government contracts, and on all of which she has failed to meet targets.

Not surprosingly she lives in a 20 room mansion with her husband, their four children and a number of 'other' friends in what they describe as a 'posh commune', whatever that means? We cannot see her as being one of the 99%!

Evidently this a part of 'Call Me Dave's' BIG SOCIETY. It consists of taking money from DWP and then to giving it to the already rich and evidently useless. There may be a good reason for doing this, it's just that Dave cannot find it!

Read more here: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2099062/Fury-families-tsar-gets-8-6m-ONE-YEAR-bulk-comes-taxpayer.html

Argentina names top football league Belgrano

Argentina was accused last night of whipping up more tension over the Falkland Islands by naming its forthcoming football season after the General Belgrano.

The country’s domestic league, which kicks off on Friday, will be known as the Crucero General Belgrano First Division.

In a further twist, the league’s winners will receive a trophy named in honour of an Argentine who murdered five Falklanders.

It will be called the Gaucho Rivero – after Antonio ‘El Gaucho’ Rivero, a Falklands resident who killed a group of British settlers in 1833.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2097991/Belgrano-soccer-league-Argentina-names-division-doomed-ship.html#ixzz1lmvKzRPl

Right-wingers are less intelligent than left wingers, says study

Children with low intelligence grow up to be prejudiced

Right-wing views make the less intelligent feel 'safe'

Analysis of more than 15,000 people

Right-wingers tend to be less intelligent than left-wingers, and people with low childhood intelligence tend to grow up to have racist and anti-gay views, says a controversial new study.

Conservative politics work almost as a 'gateway' into prejudice against others, say the Canadian academics.
The paper analysed large UK studies which compared childhood intelligence with political views in adulthood across more than 15,000 people.

The authors claim that people with low intelligence gravitate towards right-wing views because they make them feel safe.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2095549/Right-wingers-intelligent-left-wingers-says-controversial-study--conservative-politics-lead-people-racist.html#ixzz1lJ8Hka4z

The Wanted

The government’s move to strip former Royal Bank of Scotland boss Fred Goodwin of his knighthood has led to calls for ministers to consider inflicting similar punishment on other banking grandees who were implicated in the near collapse of the British financial system.

John Mann, a Labour MP who sits on the Treasury select committee, said: ‘The precedent has been set. It wasn’t Fred Goodwin on his own who caused the problems – he was part of a team of people.’

He added: ‘You can’t get a gong for services to the banking industry and then bring it to its knees and expect to keep the honour. I’m surprised it has taken so long.’

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2094783/In-spotlight-The-banking-knights-implicated-British-financial-meltdown.html#ixzz1l8y0EuQD

There is an alternative

François Hollande vows to tax the rich to pay off French deficit

Leftwing frontrunner in presidential race launches manifesto

François Hollande, the leftwing frontrunner in the French presidential race, has vowed to make the rich pay the highest price to help drag France out of its economic crisis, while promising to pump more money into schools and state-assisted jobs.

The Socialist rural MP, who recently declared "my real adversary in this campaign is the world of finance", launched his manifesto on Thursday, a road map of how the left would deal with the financial crisis. Hollande said he would raise taxes for banks and big companies as well as France's richest people, and use the money to help wipe out the nation's crippling public deficit.

By scrapping some €29bn (£24bn) worth of tax breaks for wealthier people introduced under Nicolas Sarkozy, he said he could find €20bn to deal with the corrosion of French society: record unemployment, soaring youth jobless figures and an education system that has been shamed as one of the most unequal in Europe, where one in six children leave with no qualifications.

Read more here:http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jan/26/francois-hollande-french-presidential-manifesto

It is a pity we have no party in this country that will tackle the inequality, the tax and pension breaks for the richest and the wealth divide that characterise our society.

Ministry of Defence to cut further 3,000 civilian jobs

Defence secretary will be forced to admit MoD has miscalculated how many staff it can afford, Guardian learns

Another 3,000 civilians are to be axed from the Ministry of Defence to help it bring down an estimated 2bn overspend in its budget.
Philip Hammond will be forced to make the embarrassing admission in the coming days amid fresh concern within the MoD about how to balance its budget.

This anxiety has led the defence secretary to order the army, Royal Navy and RAF to go through all their key contracts and equipment programmes to ensure they are in line with their targets.

According to sources, the department still has a £2bn-3bn overspend and ministers fear this figure will rise, not fall, unless further action is taken.

The admission over the number of civilian job losses - which may have come from miscalculations in the money for civilians - is likely to put the department under even more strain, and force a rethink about where redundancies will come from.

The strategic defence and security review (SDSR) included a pledge to axe 25,000 civilian jobs from the MoD before 2015.

This is the baseline figure that the department and the unions have been working with since September 2010.

That has now been revised to 28,000. It is understood MoD finance officials have realised that the money set aside for civilians in the SDSR won't be enough to support the workforce they wanted – so more redundancies are needed.

In addition, the MoD will lose another 7,000 civilian posts between 2015 and 2020. It means the department's civilian workforce will have been cut from 75,000 to 40,000 within nine years.
Union leaders have asked for an immediate meeting with Hammond to explain the discrepancy, and are demanding to know why civilians are paying for the mistake.

They suspect the department lost track of how many people it employed at the time of the SDSR, which might have contributed to the accounting errors.

Steve Jary, national secretary of the Prospect union, said: "The truth is that cuts to civilian specialists in the department far outnumber cuts to the armed forces. Over 10,000 civilians left the MoD last year and it plans to cut another 10,000 in 2012. The department is already struggling to cope with its day-to-day business, and come the summer, will face a moment of truth. This is a disaster waiting to happen."

He added: "It just doesn't make sense. The armed forces needs both the skills and specialisms of those in the civil service coupled with the military capacity provided by our soldiers."
Though civil service cuts are considered more palatable politically, unions have warned the loss of core skills has already forced the department to buy in consultants on expensive, short-term contracts.

In December, the Guardian revealed that the department had spent nearly £600m over two years hiring outside consultants because it did not have enough in-house expertise.
A confidential internal report on the spending highlighted numerous flaws and rule-breaking, and warned that control of the MoD purse appeared to be "poorly developed or non-existent".

Earlier this week the MoD was strongly criticised by MPs on the defence select committee who said it was "grotesque" that the armed forces were being subjected to compulsory redundancies while no civil servants have yet been asked to leave against their will.

The committee dismissed explanations given by ministers and senior officials, describing the different treatment meted out to military personnel and civil servants as shocking.

The MoD defended the position, saying: "Reductions to the civilian workforce have had to be made to help tackle the financial black hole the government inherited in the MoD. Civilians receive considerably less in compensation than the average soldier; where a sergeant receives an average payoff of around £65,000, a civilian receives around £30,000 on average. The MoD civilian workforce is reducing by around 33% compared to a reduction of 17.5% in military manpower."

The MoD said the extra 3,000 civilian cuts were part of the annual planning round.

"Each year, we review our plans to take account of changes over the previous 12 months and to ensure that we have the right equipment and manning levels to meet the future needs of our armed forces as agreed in the Strategic Defence and Security Review. Final decisions have yet to be taken but this annual process rightly considers the status of all our key programmes to ensure the continued coherence and balance of the whole programme."

UK state debt is not £1 trillion – it is only £725 billion

Stories abound on the fact that the UK supposedly has state debt of £1 trillion for the first time. (We published a story to that effect yesterday) This however is not true according to Richard Murphy at Taxresearch.

Over the last few years the UK has issued debt as shown below totalling about £560 billion.
I have based all my data on the national accounts for the third quarter of 2011 unless otherwise noted. It’s the borrowing since 2008 that has supposedly given rise to the debt of £1 trillion.

(To see the detailed figures please visit: http://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2012/01/25/uk-state-debt-is-not-1-trillion-it-is-only-725-billion/ )

However, it should be noted that the government has done something else at least as significant. Through the quantitative easing programme the Bank of England has repurchased or will be soon repurchasing near enough £275 billion of that debt (I’ve shown the last £75 billion as happening in Q3 of 2011 as that’s near enough when it was authorised).

Now the Bank of England is owned by the UK government so if, in accounting terms, a consolidated set of accounts were to be prepared the £275bn owed by the Treasury to the Bank of England would simply be crossed out, or ignored. The actual debt would only be £725 billion.

And in this case that would be absolutely the right point of view. There is no hope at all that this debt will ever be sold back into the markets: there’s enough new debt to sell to meet all market demand for UK debt without ever re-selling this stuff. So it’s absolutely right to say this debt does not exist and should not therefore be in the statistics at all because for all practical purposes it has already been written off. And as important, the interest paid on that £275 billion should not be considered government spending justifying cuts either: that interest is paid straight back to the government.

Then note what this does to the narrative on average borrowing. OK, this data misses quarter 4 of 2011 as the information is not yet available, but over 6.75 years the average borrowing is near enough just over £42 billion and that’s a remarkably consistent sum over time and is only 3% or so of current GDP; and that’s within the Maastricht limits, let it be noted.

Nor is there any hint now of this QE causing inflation, all of which can safely be said to have had other causes, not least because as Government accounts also show, the M3 measure of money supply has fallen steadily since 2009, meaning there is no prospect of inflation in the future either as a consequence of this process.

So we have no debt crisis. We just have misinformation about how big the debt is and about how much we’re borrowing. Tell the truth, as I have here, and you get a very different picture indeed. And that would also lead to very different economic policies too. Because tell this story and the focus need not be on cuts that we do not need but on growth that we do need. False accounting is forcing the national political agenda in a direction in which it need not go.

It’s all a matter of getting the story right and on this occasion it takes an accountant to do that.
So shall we stop all the other nonsense, now and get on with the real issue, which is we have low net borrowing that we can afford, lower interest costs than the government claims and the basis for sustainable recovery already in place. All we need to do is grab the opportunity.

So, why the interest in beach volleyball, Minister?

Government claims it is a coincidence MPs 'bought DOUBLE the number of tickets for 'skimpy outfit sport'

Arguably, it is an Olympic sport that would be equally at home on a Baywatch film set as it will be at the Games.

Yet the Government has insisted it is pure ‘coincidence’ that ministers have bought double the number of tickets for beach volleyball – famous for its skimpy outfits – as they have for athletics.

Former Labour sports minister Gerry Sutcliffe asked if it was just an ‘oddity’ that ministers bought 410 tickets, worth £26,000, compared with 246 for athletics.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2091350/MPs-bought-DOUBLE-number-tickets-London-2012-volleyball.html#ixzz1kSfh60SW

Harrier sale consultants net £1.1m

The Ministry of Defence paid consultants over £1.1m for their part in the sale of the UK's Harrier jump jet fleet to the United States, it has been revealed.

Defence Equipment, Support and Technology minister Peter Luff revealed the figure in the House of Commons following a question from Madeleine Moon MP.

The US paid around £110m for 72 Harriers, meaning that consultants netted around 1 per cent of the final value of the deal. The payments are understood to be part of a wider consultancy deal with Alix Partners, which drew criticism last year when it was revealed that their consultants were being paid around £3,950 a day for their work as savings consultants.Luff said that the MoD paid no other external bodies during the trade deal, which was announced in late November 2011."

No external legal or currency brokerage costs were incurred by the Ministry of Defence for the retirement of the Harrier fleet or for the sale to the US Government," said Luff. "The external consultancy costs for these two activities were £0.7m and £0.4m respectively. We do not expect to incur any further costs relating to the retirement and sale to the US Government of the Harrier fleet."

The value of the sale is $180m (around £110m). This figure includes 72 Harrier airframes, spares and associated support equipment. The MoD will receive monetary payment from the US government for the full value of the Harrier sale before 1 April 2012. Overall £1bn will be saved from removing the Harrier from service."Luff said that the money from the sale would be retained by the Ministry of Defence so that it could be reinvested in "key priorities".Shadow Defence Secretary Jim Murphy said the £1.1m cost was "extraordinary".

"Ministers must explain why others are profiting from decisions which have seen thousands made redundant and Britain left without an aircraft carrier with aircraft for a decade. Surely this money could be better spent to help preserve jobs or important capabilities," he said."

It's plain wrong for a consultant to be paid more in a week than many of our soldiers receive in a year. David Cameron and his Ministers are losing all credibility on defence."Madeleine Moon told The London Evening Standard she was "appalled" at the consultancy bill for the sale.

MoD redundancy payoffs cost £75m

The Ministry of Defence has paid out more than £75m to civilian staff who have been made redundant in the last three months, it has been revealed.

Around 2,500 of the ministry's staff received an average payout of around £30,000, official figures published in The Guardian show.

Over 25,000 civilian redundancies were called for by 2015 in 2010's Strategic Defence and Security Review. With an average payout cost of £30,000, the SDSR-related redundancies could cost the Ministry £750m, although savings in the salary bill over time will be significantly higher, helping the MoD tackle its budgetary 'black hole'.

A Ministry of Defence spokesman said that the average civilian member of staff had received "considerably" less in their redundancy payouts than military personnel."Where a sergeant receives an average payoff of around £65,000, a civilian receives around £30,000 on average," the spokesman said."

The MoD civilian workforce is reducing by around 33 per cent compared to a reduction of 17.5 per cent in military manpower.

"Shadow defence secretary Jim Murphy said the figures showed government's priorities were wrong."David Cameron is culling the army in their thousands while spending millions on civil service payoffs," said Murphy. "He needs to get his priorities straight. People worried about the impact of the cuts on families and the front line will be angry at this news."

UK debt passes £1 trillion for the first time

UK public debt has passed the £1 trillion mark for the first time, as the Government borrowed nearly £14bn last month despite its continued austerity drive. (The Telegraph)

Public sector net debt excluding financial interventions, such as bank bail-outs, rose to £1.004 trillion in December, the highest since records began in 1993.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said it expected the figure to ease back in January due to tax inflows, but to rise again in February.

However, borrowing in December came in lower than expected, putting Chancellor George Osborne further ahead of a target set by the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) to bring borrowing down by £10bn to £127bn this financial year.

The ONS said that public sector net borrowing, excluding financial interventions fell to £13.7bn in December, down from £15.9bn in the same period in 2010.

Sterling slipped slightly against the euro following the news, after falling close to a four-week low on the back of better-than-expected eurozone PMI surveys. The pound also fell a quarter of a cent against the dollar, to $1.5534.

Vicky Redwood, senior economist at Capital Economics, said that the £1 trillion figure was "a reminder of the enormity of the challenge that still lies ahead to get the public finances back on a sustainable footing."

She added: "We expect weaker growth than the OBR is forecasting to make its future borrowing forecasts much harder to meet. Indeed, so far, it has been weaker spending growth helping borrowing to fall, whereas tax receipts are falling short of the fiscal forecasts."

Stalling growth saw the Chancellor revise UK borrowing forecasts in last year's Autumn Statement. Borrowing is now expected to be £5bn more this financial year than originally forecast, £19bn higher next year and £30bn higher in 2013-14.

The OBR also said in November that downward revisions to its growth forecasts meant that the deficit would also shrink less quickly over the next five years.

Most economists expect official GDP figures released on Wednesday to show the UK economy contracted during the final quarter of 2011.

Growth is expected to have fallen 0.1pc in the three months to December according to a Bloomberg poll, compared with a 0.6pc rise during the third quarter.

The International Labour Organisation (ILO) warned on Monday that Britain risks falling back into recession because of an "unabated" weakening of the jobs market, while the Ernst & Young ITEM Club and the Centre for Economics and Business Research believe that the UK is already in recession.

Europe's top judge: Cameron is wrong about human rights

Europe's most senior judge launches an attack on David Cameron today, accusing the British Government of pandering to the tabloid press in its criticism of the European Court of Human Rights.

Writing in The Independent on the eve of the Prime Minister's visit to Strasbourg, where the court is based, its president, Sir Nicolas Bratza, says "senior British politicians" have betrayed their ignorance of the institution's history and legal position by joining the clamour for its reform.

Sir Nicolas's highly unusual intervention comes as the Prime Minister prepares to deliver a speech calling for sweeping changes to the court's operation. Mr Cameron will call for a "filtering system" to prevent cases properly resolved in national courts from being referred to Strasbourg and for an overhaul of how judges are appointed.

Ministers are angry that the court – which was set up in the aftermath of the Second World War – last week blocked the deportation of the radical preacher Abu Qatada to Jordon, where he is wanted on terrorist charges. The Government – backed by opposition parties – is also wrangling with the court over whether prisoners should be given the right to vote. Mr Cameron is under pressure from Tory backbenchers to withdraw completely from the court.

But Sir Nicolas, Britain's nominee to the court, insists the institution's influence on human rights in Britain has been "overwhelmingly positive". Writing in The Independent today, he defends the court's record, citing "landmark rulings" that lifted the ban on homosexuals serving in the armed forces, allowed the media to challenge restrictions in reporting the Thalidomide case and ensured child criminals were not tried in adult courts.

He directly addresses Mr Cameron's charge that the court has allowed too large a backlog of cases to build up, saying the numbers of states signing up to the European Convention on Human Rights has led to a "massive increase in its caseload".

Sir Nicolas also hits back at the Government's accusation that the court interferes too often in domestic cases, saying: "The criticism relating to interference is simply not borne out by the facts."

The Strasbourg court has been "particularly respectful of decisions" in Britain since the Human Rights Act, which enshrined the Convention in British law, because of the "very high quality of those decisions", he says. Sir Nicolas says the court has streamlined its procedures to help it deal with "repetitive cases".

He says: "Against this background, it is disappointing to hear senior British politicians lending their voices to criticisms more frequently heard in the popular press, often based on a misunderstanding of the court's role and history, and of the legal issues at stake.
"It is particularly unfortunate that a single judgment of the court on a case relating to UK prisoners' voting rights, which was delivered in 2005 and has still not been implemented, has been used as the springboard for a sustained attack on the court and has led to repeated calls for the granting of powers of Parliament to override judgments of the court against the UK, and even for the withdrawal of the UK from the Convention."

His comments reflect growing frustration in Strasbourg at the rhetoric directed at the court from Britain. Earlier this month, Tory MPs claimed that the UK loses three out of four cases it fights in the court.

But the real figure is 61 per cent, one of the lowest "violation rates" of any European country. France, Germany, Italy and Norway all lose a significantly larger proportion of cases. Britain's real violation rate is actually closer to 2 per cent because 97 per cent of British cases that come before the court are thrown out altogether.

Case study

Chris Morris, a 32-year-old lifestyle coach, was just 16 when he and other teenagers went to the European Court of Human Rights to challenge Britain's age-of-consent rules. They won, resulting in legislation that eventually equalised the age of consent for both gay and straight people.

"In my specific case, the European Court of Human Rights was vital. There was such public confusion over the age of consent. Politicians didn't want to take sides. But as soon as it became clear that the court was going to make a decision anyway, the politicians suddenly aligned themselves behind what was going to happen. It's unbelievable to think how recent the campaign was. Sometimes I look at young gay people now and think, wow, it really is a different world for them. What the court did was make it a much higher-profile cause and a clear human-rights issue. It sent out the message that this is what a civilised country should be doing. I could no longer be put in prison for what my straight friends were doing."

Case histories: what the Court of Human Rights has done for us

1972 Tyrer vs UK
Anthony Tyrer was 15 years old when he was legally flogged by police officers on the Isle of Man for assaulting a fellow schoolboy. The case went to Strasbourg where judges ruled that such punishment was "inhuman or degrading". At the time the decision was met with outrage yet one would be hard pressed to find European law enforcement agencies that still advocate judicially sanctioned beatings for criminals.

1979 The Sunday Times vs UK
Were it not for the European Court of Human Rights the true extent of the thalidomide scandal might never have been uncovered. Marketed as a cure for morning sickness, thalidomide caused thousands of children to be born with shortened limbs – the drug had never been tested properly.

The Sunday Times newspaper wanted to publish an investigative expose of the scandal but was halted by an injunction from the House of Lords because the makers of thalidomide were still being sued by its victims at the time. The ECHR later ruled that the injunction was a breach of Article 10 – the right to freedom of expression – because it was disproportionate and unnecessary. The decision directly led to a radical reworking of Britain's contempt of court laws.

2009 FT and others vs UK
Protection of sources is a cornerstone of journalism. But governments and businesses often go to extreme lengths to try and force reporters to reveal the identities of whistleblowers. In 2001 The Financial Times and four other media organisations – including The Independent – were taken to court by the Belgian company Interbrew and ordered to hand over documents concerning a confidential takeover bid. The British courts repeatedly sided with Interbrew. The case eventually wound its way to Strasbourg where – eight years later – judges ruled that giving up a source would breach the right to freedom of expression.

1996 Sutherland and Moore vs UK
In 1996 the ECHR ruled that it was discriminatory to have a different age of consent for gay men and women. Previous attempts to challenge such discrimination had failed until gay activists Euan Sutherland and Chris Moore challenged Britain's laws which insisted homosexuals wait until 18 before they could legally have sex compared to 16 for straight men and women.

2011 Abu Qatada vs UK
Last week a ruling that radical Islamist cleric Abu Qatada could not be deported to Jordan was met with howls of derision by the popular press and politicians. Yet Qatada's deportation was not halted because judges feared he would be mistreated by the Jordanians – the judges, in fact, accepted that Britain had obtained diplomatic assurances that he would be unharmed. What they could not allow was the deportation of a man who would be tried by the Jordanians using evidence that had undoubtedly been obtained through torture. Given Britain's commitment to neither practising nor encouraging torture, the court ruled that any deportation of Qatada would result in a trial that would be "not only immoral and illegal, but also entirely unreliable in its outcome".

2011 Bamber & others vs UK
On the same day the court ruled on Abu Qatada, Strasbourg published an equally significant verdict in which judges insisted that Britain was able to impose life tariffs that meant life. Three convicted murderers – Jeremy Bamber, Douglas Vinter and Peter Moore – tried to argue that life sentences with no hope of release constituted inhumane or degrading treatment. The judges disagreed saying that as long as the convictions were safe and the crimes grave enough, there was no reason why some prisoners should not be held behind bars for the rest of their lives.

Jerome Taylor, The Independent

PCS to call TUC for more walkouts over pensions

Public and Commercial Services union motion unlikely to succeed and could result in breakaway group taking action (reports The Guardian)

The largest civil service union will call for more public sector walkouts at a TUC meeting on Thursday after confirming its opposition to pension changes.

However, the call by the Public and Commercial Services union is unlikely to succeed and could result in a breakaway group of unions taking further industrial action.

Mark Serwotka, the PCS general secretary, said another bout of "co-ordinated strike action" was needed following a meeting of the union's executive, with teachers' unions and Unite among the organisations harbouring similar concerns.

A union source said the TUC meeting of public sector unionswill update senior figures on progress in pension talks but will not be used to set new strike dates.