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Daily Mail
a day ago
- Business
- Daily Mail
EXCLUSIVE Government is 'blowing £270million a year on army of 6,500 spin doctors' instead of cutting public services
Labour is being urged to slash the 6,500-strong army of government spin doctors instead of cutting public services. New figures reveal that some Whitehall departments and quangos are employing more than 100 civil servants in press offices, marketing and social media. With an average salary of £41,800, it could mean the total annual bill for the 6,500 staff in the Government communication service is a staggering £271 million. And the costs to taxpayers of the state spin machine are set to rise further still as the Government is advertising a £1.7 billion contract for media and advertising. Last night, Shadow Cabinet Office minister Alex Burghart told the Mail: 'This is an absurd waste of taxpayers' money. 'They're growing an army of spin doctors to defend indefensible decisions, like snatching winter fuel payments from vulnerable pensioners.' The figures, which the Tories obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, show that NHS England had the most staff in communications roles, with 289 last year. Next is HM Revenue & Customs with 235. UK Research and Innovation had 191 communication workers last year. Labour sources insisted that the Government already has a target of reducing departmental administration costs by 15 per cent over the next five years. This is including communications teams, delivering savings of more than £2 billion a year by 2030 and targeting spending on frontline services. A Cabinet Office source said: 'These officials were nearly all recruited on the Tories' watch as they broke their promises over and over again by repeatedly increasing the size of the civil service.'
Daily Mail
a day ago
- Business
- Daily Mail
'Sleekit' Swinney slips out £1.7m bill for army of spin doctors during by-election
The First Minister has been dubbed 'sleekit' after the average £100,000 bill for each of his 17 spin-doctors was slipped out under cover of the Hamilton by-election. The 'shameful' details were quietly released as Scotland woke up to Labour shock win over the SNP on Friday. An obscure parliamentary written answer showed taxpayers were charged more than £1.7million for 17 special advisers, known as SpAds, in the last financial year. Appointed by the First Minister, SpAds are temporary civil servants who are not bound by neutrality rules and offer explicit political advice and brief the media. Scottish Tory finance spokesman Craig Hoy said: 'The SNP have wasted a shameful amount of taxpayers' money on their army of spin-doctors. 'You'd be forgiven for thinking sleekit Swinney snuck out these bombshell figures on a day when people's minds were elsewhere.' Labour narrowly won the Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse byelection in the early hours of Friday morning by 602 votes, defying expectations that the SNP would hold the seat. The SpAd costs were released via a 'Government inspired question', a device that lets ministers make information public with minimal fanfare. On June 5, the day of the byelection, a question tabled in the name of SNP loyalist Rona Mackay asked the total cost of employing special advisers in 2024/25. The next day, as politicians pored over the result, minister for parliamentary business Jamie Hepburn, who was SNP campaign coordinator in the byelection, replied. He revealed the total cost was £1,745,042, which included salary costs, employer national insurance, and employer pension contributions. Nine SpAds were paid between £71,393 and £78,719, seven between £84,983 and £97,644, and one - most likely chief of staff Colin McAllister - between £108,781 and £116,435. Ministers are currently paid £109,584. When Ms Mackay, the MSP for Strathkelvin and Bearsden, asked the same question last year it was not until September that she received a reply. Scottish Labour deputy Dame Jackie Baillie said: 'Scots are sick of footing the bill for an SNP government that is still failing to deliver. 'And this sleekit attempt to sneak these figures out during a by-election won't hide the fact that the SNP cannot be trusted with taxpayers' money.' Lib Dem MSP Willie Rennie added: 'The SNP are investing more effort in making excuses for their failures in government.' The SpAd bill has more than trebled since the SNP came to power in 2007, when Alex Salmond had seven full-time special advisers costing £566,000. However the cost last year was lower than 2023/24, when Humza Yousaf employed a record 19 SpAds costing £1,906,963. SpAds are exempt from political neutrality rules and can advise ministers on everything from political strategy to speech-writing and policy. Critics believe they have been central to creating a 'secret Scotland' culture within the SNP Government. In 2022, the Scottish Information Commissioner found 'significant and systemic failures' in the way the SNP Government responds to freedom of information (FoI) requests. This included evidence that many FoI responses were sent to SpAds for comment before they were issued. A Scottish Government spokesman said: 'Due to the appointment of a new First Minister in May 2024, there were several changes to the Special Adviser team. 'The number and total cost of special advisers reduced in comparison to the previous year.'
The Sun
08-05-2025
- Politics
- The Sun
Asylum-seeking is one of Britain's few growth industries – but its YOU the taxpayer pouring £4.5million A DAY into it
THE next time you have to wait days for a GP appointment, your car hits a pothole, the police fail to turn up when you report a crime or you struggle to pay the gas bill, please try to remember it's all for a good cause. After all, the Government can't be wasting all their time, money and effort providing basic public services, or helping you to make ends meet, when they've got far more important priorities than us mere voters. 4 4 There may never be enough money to build more hospitals and prisons, hire more police and nurses, or to repair the roads but, never fear, there will ALWAYS be enough cash in the Treasury coffers to pay for the ever-spiralling cost of asylum seekers. And, make no mistake, that cost is now eye-wateringly huge. The latest figures from the National Audit Office are staggering as close to £4.5million of taxpayers' hard-earned money will now be spent EVERY DAY on hotel bills and other accommodation for asylum seekers. The spending watchdog predicts that housing costs originally expected to total £4.5billion over the decade up to 2029 will now cost us a whopping £15.3billion over that same period. That's £175,000 spent every HOUR and more than £2,900 every single MINUTE on making life comfortable for the 110,000-plus mostly young men of fighting age who have come to our shores in recent years from countries and cultures a world away from our own. And with more than 11,000 new arrivals since the New Year (a whopping 40 per cent rise on the same months last year), the problem is only set to get worse. So don't expect your taxes to come down or those potholes to get fixed any time soon. But don't worry, not everyone is losing out. These days, asylum is one of Britain's few growth industries! After all, the Channel boat gangs are still raking in millions for their dinghy taxi service. And government contractors such as Serco are drowning in profits for providing accommodation, as are the hoteliers and private landlords getting guaranteed income on five-year leases, not to mention all the human rights lawyers, NGO staffers and translators with their snouts in the trough. Utterly bizarre It is absolutely galling to see these enormous sums being spent on people arriving here illegally when the Government has taken away the Winter Fuel Allowance from millions of our own pensioners and put up Employer National Insurance Contributions for even the lowest-paid workers. Sir Keir Starmer promised ahead of the General Election to 'smash the gangs' and close down the asylum hotels. So that's all working out terribly well, isn't it? It's no surprise then, that Labour and the Tories, with their abysmal immigration records, are facing fierce competition from Reform UK in the polls and also at the ballot box last week. Sir Keir Starmer promised ahead of the General Election to ' smash the gangs ' and close down the asylum hotels. So that's all working out terribly well, isn't it? Now he's desperately resorting to a plan — to be announced next week — to tackle LEGAL migration by requiring all new migrants coming to the UK to be fluent in English to get a visa and to apply for permanent settlement. Isn't it utterly bizarre that no one thought of this before? Meanwhile, Tory leader Kemi Badenoch is calling for an annual binding vote in Parliament on a migration cap and ending immigration appeals under the Human Rights Act. This from the party that oversaw a record 728,000 net migration figure last year after promising way back in 2010 to get that figure down to 'the tens of thousands'. The old 'uns are always the funniest, aren't they? 4 There is, however, one tiny spark of hope coming from Germany, where the new coalition government led by Friedrich Merz has announced a major U-turn on Angela Merkel's open borders policy of the past ten years that saw three million arrivals. Border officials there have now been ordered to turn away any undocumented migrants claiming asylum unless they are obviously genuine desperate cases. Germany's move — spurred only by the electoral threat to mainstream parties from the hard-right, anti-immigration AfD Party — could well create a domino effect across Europe as national border after national border is closed. While the Channel migrants keep pouring in on their rickety dinghies, our hard-earned taxes will continue to pour out to pay for their room and board. If Germany can do that, why can't Britain? It's a fair question and one to which we will be unlikely to get an answer. Our politicians are far too busy handing out our taxpayers' largesse to the hordes of illegal migrants and visa over-stayers who now reside among us. While the Channel migrants keep pouring in on their rickety dinghies, our hard-earned taxes will continue to pour out to pay for their room and board. Meanwhile our public services crumble, our pensioners sit in the cold and the cost of living keeps going up. The spending watchdog has laid out the true cost of asylum seekers to the public purse but, for most taxpayers, the sums just don't add up any more. SIR KEIR HAS BREXIT TO THANK I LIKE to give credit where it's due so I will happily offer my congratulations to Sir Keir Starmer and his trade negotiators for two big wins this week. Not only did they manage to clinch a 'full fat' trade deal with India, the world's fourth biggest and fastest growing economy, they also succeeded in getting a deal with the US, the world's largest economy, to cut tariffs on steel, aluminium and cars – the first such agreement since Donald Trump launched his global tariff war. 4 I hope that, in return, Starmer and his Labour Remainer chums will also cheerily give credit to Brexit for making those deals possible. After all, if the PM had succeeded in his three-year battle after the 2016 referendum to keep us in the EU, the UK would not be a sovereign state able to negotiate our own trade treaties. What a delicious irony – after former US President Barack Obama warned we'd be at 'the back of the queue' for a free trade deal if we dared to vote Leave – that it is Remoaner-in-Chief Starmer who has put us right at the front. And not DESPITE Brexit but BECAUSE we voted to Leave. THE events to mark the 80th anniversary of VE Day have been joyful and moving as we remember the huge sacrifices made by ordinary British men and women both on the battlefield and on the home front. So how dispiriting it is to see poll after poll suggesting that young Brits today would NOT be willing to go to war to defend our nation. Is it any wonder they feel this way after decades of being told that their country is responsible for almost everything bad that's ever happened in the world? Why would they be proud of what Britain stands for and the vital role we have played in building and defending Western civilisation? Of course no one wants war but freedom from tyranny, and values such as liberty, equality, democracy, tolerance and the rule of law, are ALWAYS worth fighting for. And, yes, worth dying for too.
