Why it is wrong to pay MOD Civil Servants bonuses now

When I served in the Army the total strength was just over 180,000 of which the Territorial Army accounted for 85,000. Today those numbers are much smaller, a shade over 100,000 in total, but in reality a TA of only 19,000 trained soldiers.

Meanwhile the civil service element of the MOD has grown to a bloated 85,000 and continues to deliver outstanding failures, especially in the areas of procurement. Cost over runs and/or late delivery is almost the norm. The only equipment that is delivered relatively successfully is via Urgent Operational Requirements (UOR) and anyone who has worked on the supplier side of UOR will tell you that they are a god-send. If something is “urgent” then cost doesn’t matter. Tidy mark-ups all round!

Today we learn that over 55,000 MOD civil servants are receiving bonuses. In principle I don’t mind giving  people an incentive to over perform. But to do so you need to accept that if people under-perform then they lose the most basic bonus of even keeping their job. So for some of those who have failed there should have been dismissal.  I can’t seem to have heard about any of that anywhere, even for the team that several years ago delivered 9 helicopters that sit in a shed in the West of England as they didn’t order the right software to be able to fly them.

For those who have achieved bonuses, I would dearly love to know what their targets were. If you accept that bonuses are a means of getting more out of people then you need to know how much more you are getting in return for the payment made.

As for the arguments about it all being within the salary budget: Rubbish! It all comes from the Defence Budget, the one that recently wanted to save £20 million by cutting all TA training for the rest of this financial year. Money can be re-allocated within the Ministry if there is will to do so.

Sadly though when it comes to will power we are lacking. Nobody is prepared to take on the over-sized civil element in the MOD. Nobody drives for true accountability and as a result we reward mediocrity without evening knowing how high the bar of mediocrity had been set.