Bonuses for UK ministry staff under fire

London: The British government yesterday defended the Ministry of Defence (MoD) payment system after it emerged that its civil servants shared £47 million in bonuses over seven months, to the outrage of families of soldiers killed in action recently.

The awards for exceptional performance were called "obscene" by Hazel Hunt whose son, Richard, died fighting with the 2nd Battalion the Royal Welsh in Helmand province, Afghanistan, in August.

Phil Cooper, whose son received £200,000 in compensation for injuries received in Iraq, condemned the bonuses as "absolutely disgusting".

But the home secretary, Alan Johnson, said that the recipients did "difficult and sometimes dangerous" jobs, including going to the frontline to support troops. MoD civil servants pointed out that they were paid less than the troops. The MoD said the average payout would be less than £1,000.

The payments were revealed in the House of Commons after questions from Liam Fox, the shadow defence secretary.

Johnson told GMTV: "I think we need to find more detail about what MoD civil servants do, what they get the bonuses for, before you say this is unjustified.

"Our priority always has to be the soldiers at the frontline for equipment, for pay, for conditions." But, he said, civil servants had to go "into the frontline" to, for example, develop mechanisms to protect troops from improvised explosive devices.

"When they do that my understanding is they work 17, 18 hours in Afghanistan. They don't get overtime for that they get a bonus to compensate."

MoD "civvies" also defended the system on the Army Rumour Service Arrse, an internet chatroom widely used by troops. One, calling himself scruff_2, said: "I am a MoD civvie. I have been in the MoD for 13 years. My basic is 18k a year. My bonus this year was 380."

Another, jim30, said: "We are not exactly being paid banker level bonuses here, and most people would rather that they used this pool of money to pay us properly, rather than this current sham of a scheme."

But another user, MrPVRd, criticised the decision to pay bonuses at a time when routine training for the Territorial Army was being suspended to save money — a decision that the government reversed last month.

am absolutely staggered. No civil servant should be getting any kind of a bonus when our country is broke and our troops are fighting for their lives."