Latest news with #DogeUnit
Times
13-06-2025
- Business
- Times
Reform's Zia Yusuf: My Doge-like mission on behalf of the taxpayer
Asylum seekers have been taken trampolining, bowling, to the cinema and on shopping sprees, including to a store selling luxury hair extensions, according to Reform's anti-waste council team. Auditors styled on Elon Musk's Doge (Department of Government Efficiency) said the trips out and other spending at JD Sports and PC World cost taxpayers more than £24,000 between April 2022 and December. The claims were made about Kent county council as part of Reform UK's drive to inspect accounts at ten local authorities of which it won control in May. Zia Yusuf, who is running Reform's Doge unit, said he was concerned that some local authority bosses were treating taxpayers as 'their own personal piggy bank'. He signalled a crackdown on spending on LGBT Pride events set to take place in June and vowed to make payments to contractors for filling potholes. A team of 15 auditors has been assembled by Reform, all working nearly full-time for free. After meetings began with the council earlier in June, Yusuf said his unit had uncovered 'profligate' spending. Up to 3,000 staff at the council can work from home, Yusuf said, but his questions about how laptops were monitored to ensure productivity were met with 'filibustering'. An initial trawl of documents showed that 'civil servants are spending taxpayer money like it's their own personal piggy bank', Yusuf said. Transport for children with special educational needs (Sen) was also identified by Yusuf as an inefficient system. Councils must provide payments for taxis or bus services if the child lives more than a set distance from their nearest suitable school. Costs have risen significantly for local authorities — the County Councils Network estimates that the number of children requiring transport funding has risen by a quarter since 2019. Yusuf said: 'I've been doing some analysis already with some of the team on looking at these contracts and zooming in on how much it is costing per mile to take these kids to school. In most cases, it's somewhere between seven and 15 times the cost of an Uber ride.' Yusuf said he wanted to 'really fight for the taxpayer here and say 'it doesn't make sense, the taxpayer shouldn't be paying seven to 12 times more'. ' He said some councils could save 'tens of millions of pounds'. Yusuf said he recently met a mother whose three children all have Sen and go to the same school but are taken in three cars. 'She just thinks it's really wasteful,' he said. He stressed that 'if you're a parent with a child with Sen, then you've got nothing to fear from a Reform council', adding it was an example of how he wanted to 'deliver better services for lower marginal costs'. Action on 'vanity projects' was also signalled by Yusuf. When asked whether councils should spend money organising Pride events, he said it was up to elected representatives where to spend money — but added: 'Speaking to our councillors, I think you're going to see a lot of those things either reduced materially or cut completely … The bar for spending taxpayers' money should be ridiculously high. And those are essentially vanity projects.' Auditors have started to ask councils for full lists of staff job titles in an attempt to avoid them 'hiding' diversity, equity and inclusion roles, Yusuf said. Whistleblowers have also come forward to reveal spending Yusuf deemed wasteful. They included council workers who told him that when their laptop screen broke, they were told to have it repaired, which cost double that of buying a new one. Contract competitiveness was highlighted by Yusuf as another area of concern. He said Reform's auditors were using artificial intelligence to comb through thousands of pages of successful tenders. Too often only one firm bids and therefore automatically wins the contract, providing little in the way of competition and value for money, he said. Terms can also last for more than 20 years. 'When Nasa awarded SpaceX its space exploration contract, that was six years because you want to create accountability,' Yusuf said. 'If you give someone a 25-year contract, there's no accountability. And then you wonder why our roads are so undriveable and potholes never get repaired.' While Yusuf admitted that some of the spending criticised by Reform's Doge team was 'relatively small' in the grand scheme of council budgets, he said it was still 'egregious' and had caused the social contract to start 'fraying at the edges'. A pothole-filling pilot scheme will be set up at several councils. Yusuf said contracted firms were often paid a day rate with 'no specific deadline' and used 'Iron Age' pickaxes that delayed completion. 'We're going to run pilots and demonstrate we can massively reduce the marginal cost of repairing potholes, and then provide that as a blueprint for everybody,' he said. Audits of council finances will be replicated at the national level if Reform wins the Welsh or Scottish parliament elections next year. 'We're going to bring that to every corridor of power that Reform wins,' Yusuf said. Reform has come under criticism from political rivals for the manner of its audits. Opponents have said Nigel Farage's party will have few areas to make cuts because many council spending commitments are based on statutory requirements to deliver services. There have also been two by-elections announced for Reform councillors elected in May, leading critics to claim they are a waste of taxpayers' money. After a return to Reform last week 48 hours after he resigned as chairman, Yusuf confirmed he was 'very open' to standing as an MP and said being in parliament 'allows you to have greater impact'. He left open the possibility of vying to be Farage's pick for a potential future chancellor and said he would 'leave such decisions to him'. Yusuf was unfazed by the fact that Reform raised less than the Conservatives, Labour and the Liberal Democrats in the first quarter of the year. He stressed that much of the party's income was from £25 membership fees and added about some perspective donors: 'Some of them are, I think, a bit deluded in thinking that the cadaver of the Conservative Party might somehow be resuscitated.' Some Tory MPs are in discussion with Reform about potentially defecting, Yusuf said, but he warned that their time was running out. He said the party would need some people with experience of working in government and taking on 'the blob' in Whitehall but 'the bar is extremely high … Why would we want a Johnny-come-lately in 2028-29 when we've got amazing people who are completely new to politics'. Kent county council was contacted for comment.
BBC News
09-06-2025
- Politics
- BBC News
Zia Yusuf: Reform UK burka row is 'storm in a teacup'
Former Reform UK chairman Zia Yusuf has called a row over a social media post - in which he said it was "dumb" for one of his MPs to call for a burka ban - a "storm in a teacup". Speaking to BBC Radio 4's Today programme, Yusuf said he regretted the post and that "exhaustion led to a poor decision". Shortly after criticising MP Sarah Pochin, Yusuf quit as chairman saying that trying to get Reform UK elected was not "a good use of my time".However, two days later he returned to work for the party albeit in a different role, leading the party's Doge unit, a team inspired by the US Department of Government Efficiency, set up by President Donald Trump and Elon Musk. The initiative aims to cut wasteful spending in the councils Reform now why he had resigned as chairman, Yusuf said: "I've been working pretty much non-stop, virtually no days off."It is very difficult to keep going at that pace."He said one of the reasons he had "changed his decision so quickly" and returned to work for the party, was that he had been "inundated" by supportive messages from Reform voters and members. The series of events began last Wednesday when Pochin, the newly-elected MP for Runcorn and Helsby, asked Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer if he would join France and Denmark in banning the burka, a veil worn by some Muslim women that covers the face and body, "in the interests of public safety".The following day Yusuf, who is a Muslim, posted on X: "I do think it's dumb for a party to ask the PM if they would do something the party itself wouldn't do".Speaking to the BBC on Monday, Yusuf said "the thing that frustrated me at the time" was that Pochin had not chosen to ask something that was party for his views on a ban, he said: "If I was an MP I would think about it very deeply, I think I probably would be in favour of banning face coverings in public writ large, not just the burka."I'm very queasy and uneasy about banning things that for example would be unconstitutional in the US but we have a particular situation in the UK."He said he did not believe Islam was "a threat to the country" but added that the UK had "a problem with assimilation". Over the weekend, Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch was also asked her views on banning the burka. She told the Telegraph: "People should be allowed to wear whatever they want, not what their husband is asking them to wear or what their community says that they should wear."However, she said that organisations should be able to decide what their staff wear and that she asked people coming to her constituency surgeries to remove face coverings "whether it's a burka or a balaclava". "I'm not talking to people who are not going to show me their face," she Muslim Council of Britain accused her of "desperation" adding: "Kemi Badenoch isn't setting the agenda - she's scrambling to keep up with Reform UK's divisive rhetoric."
The Independent
07-06-2025
- Politics
- The Independent
Zia Yusuf returns to Reform UK just 48 hours after quitting
Zia Yusuf is returning to Reform UK as leader of the Elon Musk-inspired Doge unit, just 48 hours after resigning as chairman. Yusuf attributed his initial decision to quit to exhaustion and abuse following criticism of his remarks about new Runcorn MP Sarah Pochin. He said he was motivated to return after receiving supportive messages from Reform members and speaking with Nigel Farage. Yusuf clarified that his resignation was not due to strong views on the burqa, despite feeling blindsided by Pochin's question about banning it at PMQs. Farage said Yusuf had "snapped" after receiving racist abuse on social media, blaming the "very hard extreme right" for the abuse.
The Independent
07-06-2025
- Business
- The Independent
Zia Yusuf makes astonishing return to Reform UK just 48 hours after quitting as party chairman
Zia Yusuf has sensationally announced he is returning to Reform UK - just 48 hours after quitting as the party's chairman. The businessman, who said his decision to quit was a 'mistake' that came as the result of exhaustion, will take up a new role in the party following peace talks with Nigel Farage. While his formal title has not been decided, he is expected to lead Reform's Elon Musk-inspired Doge unit, as well as overseeing some aspects of policymaking, fundraising and media appearances for the party. It comes just two days after Mr Yusuf said he no longer believes 'working to get a Reform government elected is a good use of my time'.
BBC News
04-06-2025
- Business
- BBC News
Reform Doge review of Kent County Council has no time frame set
Reform UK have warned their Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) unit "will take as long as it takes" to provide Monday the Doge team arrived at Kent County Council (KCC) in Maidstone for their first chairman Zia Yusuf met leader Linden Kemkaran along with senior staff, accompanied by millionaire party backer Arron Banks and Nathaniel Fried, a tech entrepreneur said to be leading the Doge party plans to use artificial intelligence, advanced data analysis tools and forensic auditing techniques to "identify wasteful spending and recommend actionable solutions". The scheme is modelled on the Doge unit created by billionaire Elon Musk as part of Donald Trump's second term as US president.A KCC spokesperson has said the council "has always been committed to transparency and accountability" but will work "collaboratively and professionally" with the Doge said the meeting on Monday was "very productive" but the party had admitted it does not know how long it will take for the unit to produce recommendations. Reform UK took control of eight authorities from the Conservatives, along with Doncaster from Labour and Durham, which was run as a coalition, in the local elections of 1 has said it also intends to send its Doge team into Staffordshire County Council and West Northamptonshire move has been criticised in Kent by both the Liberal Democrat opposition and the county council's Green Party councillors, who both attacked the new administration's decision to cancel several scheduled committee meetings.
