50,000 military personnel left short by pay blunders

Jan 24 2008 by Our Correspondent, Western Mail

TENS of thousands of military personnel have been left out of pocket after defence chiefs failed to pay them in full.

More than 50,000 Armed Forces pay packets were short last year – some by hundreds of pounds in a single month.

Thousands more members of the Army, Navy and Royal Air Force were forced to reimburse the Ministry of Defence (MoD) after almost 20,000 overpayments.

The confusion with salary payments across the armed forces was put down to a series of failings in the operation of a new administration system.

The figures, released without fanfare to the House of Lords, come against a backdrop of criticism at the standards of forces’ kit and accommodation and their level of pay.

The figures show there were 50,764 underpayments and 19,546 overpayments between January and November last year.

There were a further 7,589 erroneous payments where the MoD was unable to say whether they were higher or lower than intended.

Liberal Democrat defence spokesman Nick Harvey said, “A handful of teething problems would be understandable, but these new figures show the scale of the problem is far worse than that. We ask enough of our armed forces already without burdening them with needless financial difficulties.

“The Government must get this sorted out without delay. Day in, day out our armed forces risk life and limb for their country.

“Surely the least Whitehall can do is ensure their pay is administered in a competent manner.”

Shadow Defence Secretary Liam Fox added, “Forces personnel have enough to worry about as it is without having to check the MoD is paying them correctly.

“The contrast between the professionalism of our troops and the incompetence of the MoD grows by the day.”

Individual cases include 763 underpayments – ranging from £98 to £348 – last January.

In July, 2,611 women were paid the £4.50 female clothing grant twice. The following month, more than 10,000 Navy reservists did not receive their travel expenses in full, thought to be up to £30 a time. Another 35,553 personnel were wrongly stopped £3 for a discontinued fund for their dependants. In other instances, information was fed into the system too late for payments to be made or the payee’s rank was wrongly recorded.

The disclosures follow sustained criticism of the joint personnel administration system, introduced in full last year, which centralised payments paperwork across the three forces.

In a written answer to peers, Baroness Taylor said there had been 2.4 million payments processed via the system last year.

Delays and errors could also be down to late and wrongful inputs by staff, although the MoD did not collect data on those incidents.

“All pay errors are rectified as soon as possible,” Baroness Taylor said.

It emerged last week that senior civil servants at the MoD had been awarded £1.3m in bonuses this year.

Baroness Taylor said civil servants were paid through a different administration scheme to forces personnel and there were no plans to change the situation.