VarSity

BBC NEWS | UK | MoD pay blunder hits armed forces

More than 50,000 military personnel have been underpaid by hundreds of pounds a month.
Thousands more armed forces staff also had to reimburse the Ministry of Defence after almost 20,000 overpayments.

New figures released to the House of Lords revealed the blunders, which have been blamed on errors in a new system.

It comes amid criticism of sub-standard kit, accommodation and pay levels within the armed forces.

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

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

Liberal Democrat defence spokesman Nick Harvey said the government must sort out the situation "without delay".

'Life and limb'

"A handful of teething problems would be understandable, but these new figures show the scale of the problem is far worse than that, " he said.

"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."

While shadow defence secretary Liam Fox branded the MoD "incompetent".

He 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."

The disclosures follow 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.

The errors could have happened because of late and wrongful inputs although the MoD did not collect data on those incidents.

She said all pay errors would be rectified as soon as possible regardless of if they were over or underpayments.

"Armed forces personnel who have been underpaid can request cash supplements equivalent to the underpayments from their units," she said.

An MoD spokesman said there were no "systematic problems" with the Joint Personnel Administration (JPA).

He said: "Since the roll-out of JPA was completed in April last year, we have achieved an accuracy level of 99.3%.

"Where errors to pay are identified and to ensure there is no financial hardship, there are well defined processes in place to ensure swift payments are made."

Comments: Totally pathetic! When I was in the recruitment office last week, they said "And you know your going to get paid every month, its not like the Army is going to run out of money is it?"

:S

glyn

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Semper in excretum. Solum profunda variat.

dave lukins

BBC NEWS | UK | MoD pay blunder hits armed forces

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

Shadow defence secretary Liam Fox branded the MoD "incompetent"


We have been saying this for years and as usual it falls on deaf ears

tankie

Yes Dave ,No,one will be held accountable, that old computer glitch has something to answer for .

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TANKIE , WITHOUT WAX

gunnut

"The bureaucracy is expanding, to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy." -- unknown

After a while the government just starts to grow for the sake of growing. It doesn't do more, but needed more people. It generates nothing but paper work. My friend who used to work for the county said "if it's not filled out in triplicate form it doesn't exist." I guess they needed the extra people to make sure the forms are filled out correctly. Then more people are needed to make sure the acquisition forms for more people are filled out correctly.

I wonder who has the worst bureaucracy in the developed world?

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"Only Nixon can go to China." -- Old Vulcan proverb.

glyn