UNITED KINGDOM: Victory for Taxpayers!

UNITED KINGDOM: Victory for Taxpayers!

 

Thanks to Taxpayers’ Alliance work, senior staff leaving public sector roles will soon have payouts capped at £95,000.  The Treasury announced that it is implementing the cap on public sector ‘exit payments’. This is a huge victory for the TPA – and it is, of course, good news for taxpayers. The Public Sector Rich List 2015 publication sparked a national debate on golden goodbyes, with mandarins and council staff leaving their jobs with eye-watering payoffs. Quite often, the same people would then walk in to another senior public sector role not long after. TPA thought that was unacceptable, and so thanks to their campaigning the government of the day put a cap of £95,000 into law, through the Enterprise Act 2016.

For that to be enacted fully, though, politicians must then enact secondary legislation, often through a statutory instrument. So the golden goodbyes continued. Exit payments across the public sector were £1.2 billion in 2016-2017.

TPA team has been in close contact with the Treasury and their comments received national media coverage in: Daily Telegraph, The Times, City A.M. and Daily Express. A consultation will now be launched to outline how the government will introduce the cap. The UK Civil Service, local government, police forces, schools and the NHS are included in a first round of implementation which will cover the vast majority of public sector workers. So they still need to be on our guard – and make sure that the proposals are not watered down. TPA needs to drive home the big savings for taxpayers. And their team will continue to speak to the Treasury to ensure that they deliver on their promises.