back to article HMRC disc losers still getting paid

The payouts received by the civil servants who took the blame for Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs losing the child benefit database have been revealed. Paul Gray departed from his job in November 2007 as the the child benefit database loss story broke and took a lump sum of £137,591. He also receives monthly payments …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Flame

    who ate all the pies??

    I guess we know where the staff bonus has gone to this year

  2. pctechxp

    makes you sick

    Makes me want to find highly illegal offshore account.

  3. Steve
    Flame

    Honourless, parasitical scum.

    What are you looking here, the title says it all?

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Flame

    Fifty grand a month?

    G-whu?

    Nice not-working-anymore if you can get it. If that's what "leaving under a cloud" gets you...

  5. Edmund Slackbladder
    Coat

    For fifty grand a month

    You need to be scoring goals. Not many. I mean, it's not a Chelski player's wage, but it's not bad.

    Thanks, I'm here all week....

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Flame

    And they wonder..

    ..why the working people of this country (average earnings around 25k per year) are pissed-off at the fat cats at the top?

    Bring on the revolution!

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Dead Vulture

    Try working for Local Gov too.

    One particular Local Authority that I erm...'know' regularly pays out £100k+ payoffs to Chief Execs and senior management.

    I believe 'Don't blame them, pay them' is our latest motto.

    Don't get upset about just one massive payoff for incompetence, get righteous pissed off about all of them!

    Now I'm just going to put on my green tights and go riding through the glen....

    AC for all the right reasons.

  8. Tony
    Alien

    standard for civil service

    I was a school governor for a number of years.

    It was quite common for someone at the LEA to leave (retire, take "early retirement", whatever) and then receive a lump sum plus set payments towards their pension fund if they qualified.

    Generally, they would then be back work in the same job 3 months later, but titled as a "consultant". The reason being, the pay all comes from different budgets - they save the money from the pay budget as it comes from a different pot of money to cover people leaving. They get then get paid from yet another pot of money set aside for paying consultants.

    Each year, the local government body has to submit a lengthy plan for a budget to central government using a very complex formula that is set out based on various criteria. If they don't make use of all of a budget they lose it - so they do everything they can to ensure they spend every penny that they can, which is why there is always a panic in Feb / March as they suddenly try to get rid of any surplus cash.

    What a system! Even amanfrommars wouldn't be able to make sense of it!

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Coat

    @Fifty grand a month

    no, he is not getting 50K a month.... he is getting monthly payments until he is 60 the total amount of all of these payments is just under 50k....

    mine is the one with all the pockets to fill with money!

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Flame

    El Reg, grow up...

    El-Reg has gone low, but this is just playing to the crowd. This isen't a story, just throwing a lump of meat to the wolfs.

    The story is man leaves job. Gets a pay out as per his contract. Gets blaimed for a cock up. You lot start calling for him to lose everything. Grow up. Realy grow the fuck up. There is nothing wrong with what happend with the pay out as far as I can see. Although Im sure this will get me flamed by people who whink they know better, and have never done anything wrong, who probably claime that they are perfect in there jobs, but could get sacked at any time, and acctualy have to pay the company too keep there job there payrises are that bad.

    Im off. This is just one step to far.

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Alert

    @AC

    When the revolution comes, we'll need a longer wall

  12. Tony Bryer

    Not as good as the private sector though

    Given that the late Financial Director of M&S got a £550K signing bonus, worked for a year, and then - having seen the share price collapse - got a £500K payoff, this guy must feel short-changed!

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Black Helicopters

    The real story is missing

    The real story is that this guy, just like Wg Cdr Farquhar in Gulf War 1*, has clearly fallen on his sword so that a more senior person (ie a politician) doesn't have to. That's why they've got rid of someone for whom the payout is pretty cheap (ie only a year or so from retirement anyway).

    *For those who don't know the story, a laptop with all the invasion plans for the gulf war on that had just been used for briefing the PM. Anyone with a military background knows that wing commanders don't brief the PM, it is rumoured that the person who did brief the PM was the Commander in Chief of Strike Command, for whom the wing commander was a personal staff officer. I heard a number of years later that Farquhar was promoted once the storm settled down a year or so later.

  14. RW
    Flame

    Who writes these insane contracts?

    Seems to me that the essence of an employment contract is "do the specified work to a high standard, get paid the going rate." with "no bonus unless you do way more than the contract calls for." And, perhaps, "penalties for performing to an acceptable standard."

    That last draconian clause applicable only to those in the highest ranks who have more or less complete autonomy; the proles have to do what they are directed to, right or wrong.

    There needs to be a law forbidding any special severance or signing bonuses for the management caste; let them live under the same rules as the proles.

    Now that I've got that rant out of my system, the truth: in the world of modern business (public or private) the rule is that once you make it into management ranks, you're an untouchable golden boy who can do no wrong -- and, if you *do* do wrong, you are never held to account for it.

    Hence, that unspeakable incompetent Carlie What's-her-face who ran HP into the ground and walked away with a suitcase full of money.

  15. Peter Simpson
    Go

    Where's Carly?

    @RW: Hence, that unspeakable incompetent Carlie What's-her-face who ran HP into the ground and walked away with a suitcase full of money.

    I believe she's working for the McCain campaign now. Fairly high up, if I'm not mistaken.

    One of my former bosses (a good guy) used to call it "F**k up and move up!"...

    // collecting a lot more than $200...

  16. Martin
    Paris Hilton

    @ Tony Bryer

    Public sector != private sector.

    M&S can do whatever the hell they like with their money; I don't shop there, and if I did then I could chose not to. The same applies to footballers (however much I dislike football, or football's absurd pay).

    The government, however, I get rather angry about when they waste money, because I have absolutely no choice but to give it to them.

    Summary: Fat-cat Plc executive's pay: Don't care

    Fat-cat govt. executive / Chris Moyles pay: Anger

    Paris, because she understands

  17. Ian
    Coat

    presumably....

    ...they lost the can and are just carrying the sack of money?

    mines the one with the bundle of used tenners in the pocket

  18. Anonymous Coward
    Black Helicopters

    No clear Management structure

    What about the director of Tax Credit/Child Benefit.

    At the time I thought fair play to Paul Gray, he's doing the right thing even if he's the wrong man to carry the can. It should have been either the chancellor (for choice, the man who set it all up, but eyebrows would have done) or... the director of the benefits side of HMRC. Paul Gray was to removed from the decisions in the department, and not the man who'd ultimately authorised all the decisions that had ducked things up.

    Black helicopters because when Phorm comes in I won't be able to post like this (unless I accidentally connect to the neighbour's wireless)

  19. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Oh, no!

    "...until he is 60 - in August 2008."

    That long?!

  20. Anonymous Coward
    Stop

    re. El Reg, grow up...

    I agree; how many senior managers really know, or have any control over, the day-to-day activities of people four or five layers below them in the management structure? Neither of these people "actually lost the disk", but got singled out to take the fall and had to leave under the terms of their contract of employment.

    Not a real story at all!

    As a few people have pointed out, the payouts are nothing compared to big private enterprise payouts for screwing up.

    Handling confidential data is a part of many peoples daily activities, most organisations are vulnerable to a data loss because it's just so easy to move large amounts of data these days that it's being done by very junior employees without any opportunity to control it.

    In the old days, to move this much data would require an IT specialist to create a large(ish) tape using a piece of equipment with restricted access (probably inside a secure machine room); the IT "expert" might even think about encrypting the data and using a specialist courier to transport it. These days almost every desktop has an optical writer and people can just make a copy and stick it in an envelope. Technology has given more people the opportunity to lose more data, you can minimise the risk with training and policies (have you ever read your companies policies in this area?) but you won't eliminate them.

    Anon as I'm provoking the wrath of the Twat-o-tron.

  21. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    @Martin re. @ Tony Bryer

    "Fat-cat Plc executive's pay: Don't care"

    Hang on Martin; if you've got any kind of investment (e.g. a pension fund) then you SHOULD be concerned about PLC performance, 'cos that's where YOUR money is (probably quite a big chunk of it).

    Most of us who pay into private pensions have rather a lot riding on these fat-cats; oh sorry, I'm forgetting; if the private sector fucks up badly enough they can blame that on the government too - Equitable Life anyone?

  22. Secretgeek

    @ 're: El Reg, grow up'

    The point I think you're missing here is that a manager, theorietically at least) shouldn't have to oversee every single operation of the area. What they should do is install, embed and if necessary impose a culture where data protection concerns are understood and accounted for. If that didn't happen then the manager has failed and should be held accountable.

    Of course if the manager failed because senior management couldn't give a toss about data protection either then they should go too along with the junior numpty that sent the discs in the first place.

    It's not acceptable to say 'Well management can't control everything.' in any area of management. That's when you get things like Potters Bar.

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