Nothing very much to do, at a price

The Ananova website recently quoted Conservative sources as saying that there is a vast army of civil servants in Whitehall, 1,743 was figure quoted in early October, who have no duties to perform. The departments with most staff in this category were Defence with 830 or almost half, (why am I not surprised?), Work & Pensions with 368 and Foreign Office with 212.

They are paid as full time staff and the annual salary bill is in excess of £50 million a year.

The Cabinet Office claims that among these are people returning from career breaks, maternity or sick leave or merely waiting to be assigned to new full-time roles, and that they would undertake some duties until then.

A sum of £50 million is small in comparison with the vast amount of money wasted, as seems to be the destiny of the £12 billion spent on the NHS computer system, and these frictional costs could perhaps never be entirely removed.

But these civil servants are added to the vast number of advisers, communication staff (-spin makers) who are paid by us but serve the Labour Party. Finally there is the vast number of consultants who earn enormous sums doing what experienced civil servants should be doing.

In human resource terms this Government wastes in all sorts of ways, not least in waste of human talent.