People management problems continue to mount for the Ministry of Defence (MoD) after it admitted making more than 70,000 incorrect payments to members of the Armed Forces.
The MoD was accused of incompetence by opposition politicians after telling the House of Lords it had made 50,764 underpayments, and 19,546 overpayments in 2007.
Shadow defence secretary Liam Fox said: “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,” he added.
But defence officials have denied that there was a problem with its new ‘joint personnel administration’ system – which unites the previously separate payment systems of the Navy, Army and Air Force – and insisted that mistakes had been swiftly dealt with.
A spokesman for the ministry said the system had an accuracy level of 99.3% since its implementation was completed in April last year.
