More than £430m has been handed out in redundancy payments to civil servants as a result of the Gershon Review.
The figures were revealed in Parliamentary answers to Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesperson, Lord Oakeshott.
The total also includes a sum of £1.1m shared by two senior Treasury officials
The Lib Dems said the true cost could be even higher as the Home Office and MoD were unable to provide figures.
Payments totalling £432m went to 7,718 staff made redundant following Sir Peter Gershon’s review of public sector spending, to streamline public services, cut Civil Service jobs, and reduce costs to the taxpayer.
Lord Oakeshott said: “The government has thrown half a billion pounds of taxpayers’ cash at civil servants to pay them not to work. The costs to the taxpayer are only too clear.
“The benefits are vague and stretching into the future. No business that runs its redundancy programme like this would last 10 minutes.
“Two treasury bigwigs really hit the jackpot, splitting over £1m between them. Did 67 senior managers at the Treasury really deserve golden goodbyes averaging over £220,000 each, on top of their generous pensions?”
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Oakeshott accused the Home Office and MoD of being totally incompetent after they failed to provide answers.
“No wonder the Home Office loses track of who to deport if it can’t even count its own redundancies. The MoD doesn’t seem to have a clue what 19,000 non-retiring leavers have cost the taxpayer,” he said.
