Peter Hoskin

The recession-proof civil servants

A recession is a time for belt-tightening.  But, going off the the Sunday Times’s cover story this morning, some leading civil servants didn’t get that memo.  They’re engaging in exactly the same sort of snout-in-trough-ery that we normally see coming from Parliament – and all courtesy of taxpayers’ money.  Here’s the case of David Nicholson:

“David Nicholson, the head of the NHS, claims an annual £37,600 allowance for working away from home – yet he was already working and living in London when he took the job three years ago, so did not have to relocate. Nicholson was head of NHS London, and had a flat in the centre of the city, when he was moved to his highly paid London-based post in charge of the National Health Service in 2006.

According to the Department of Health resource accounts for 2007-8, he received the second-home perk on top of his £215,000 salary.

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