Ministry of Defence pocketed £57million in bonuses regardless of ‘black gap’ warnings
The windfall for civil servants dished out by the Government to mostly desk-bound staff is £25 million more than the £32 million they received in 2019, as financial woes press on
The Ministry of Defence is in serious financial trouble, but workers are getting huge bonuses(Image: PA)
Ministry of Defence (MoD) penpushers pocketed £57million in bonuses last year, much to the dismay of the taxpayer. This comes despite huge warnings of a financial black hole, as well as the threat of World War 3.
The cash windfall for civil servants dished out by the Government to mostly desk-bound staff is £25 million more than the £32 million they received in 2019. It means that in the past six years the extra dosh MoD mandarins have trousered amounts to £200million.
Colonel Philip Ingram, a former Army intelligence officer, said: “While I recognise many MoD civil servants work extremely hard and deliver real capability, there is no way that this level of bonus payments is justified. More programmes have been delayed or failed, recruitment and retention has got worse, the military can do less and less and no one has been held to account.
“The MoD has a track record for rewarding failure. If the MoD wants a bonus-driven culture it needs an accountability culture alongside it — if those who do well get bonuses, those who fail should be sacked.”
It comes weeks after reports that PM Keir Starmer was told by a senior military boss that the armed forces are chronically under-funded. Britain’s Chief of the Defence Staff, Air Chief Marshal Sir Richard Knighton, is said to have warned him about a £28 billion black hole.
It has also raised fears that the government could be forced to make drastic budget cuts at the same time as the UK faces the threat of conflict with Russia in Ukraine. Figures released by the MoD for the year 2024/25 show that 24,215 civil servants received non-consolidated performance-related pay awards worth £23 million.
The maximum value of the bonus, according to the MoD, was £5,000, but not all civil servants received the highest award. Several senior MoD civil servants also received six-figure bonuses since 2019, including Mike Green, chief executive of the Defence Infrastructure Organisation, the department that manages armed forces housing.
He earned over £160,000 in 2024 and was also entitled to a performance pay award of £17,000. The new figures also show that three other executive directors were handed a bonus payment of £40,000 last year.
It comes as warnings have been made over whether the Army is ready to go to war should an all-out conflict with Russia break out. Now the Prime Minister has come under pressure to start stockpiling arms ahead of a potential war, as calls grow for more people to enlist to defend the country.
Former Defence Minister Ben Wallace, who served from 2019 to 2023, said: “As long as Trooping the Colour was happening, and the Red Arrows flew, and prime ministers could pose at NATO, everything was fine, but it wasn’t fine. And the people who knew it wasn’t fine were actually the Americans, but also the Russians.”
As well as this, Lord George Robertson, who served as Labour’s Defence Minister in the late 1990s, added that the British army was “really unprepared” to take on Russia. He added: “The training is not right, and we don’t have enough medics to take the casualties that would be involved in a full-scale war.”
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