£1.5million spent to allow Health Department staff go idle

While the UK's NHS trusts are being forced to slash their staf numbers because of rising budget deficits, the Health Department currrently has 85 bureaucrats on the payroll that have no jobs to do. Discribed in the Health Department's annual business plan as being "displaced" (i.e. they have no work to do and no job to go to within the department) the cost of paying for these 85 people not to work amounts to £1.5 million over a six month agreement -- the equivilant of employing 53 junior doctors.

Shadow Health Secretary Andrew Lansley is quoted in The Sun (see: http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2-2007170357,00.html) as saying: “It is a cruel irony that while (Patricia Hewitt) demands hospitals leave posts without people, she employs people without posts."