Labour has accused ministers of getting around a civil service pay freeze last year by handing out at least £30mn in bonuses in the form of non-cash vouchers, to be spent at outlets including retailer Argos and bakery chain Greggs.
The vouchers, which can be spent at high street chains and on leisure among other things, have become an increasingly popular way for the civil service to reward staff across the country while pay is held down.
Using a series of parliamentary questions, Labour established that the use of non-cash vouchers soared in 2021-22, a year during which most civil servants had their salaries frozen.
Sixteen Whitehall departments paid out a combined total of £29.5mn to staff in the form of “reward and recognition” vouchers, a third more than in 2020-21, and two-thirds more than the amount paid out in 2018-19.
Florence Eshalomi, shadow cabinet minister, said on Wednesday: “No-one would dispute that hard-working civil servants deserve to be recognised for their efforts, especially those who went the extra mile during the pandemic.
“But once again, what we see in these figures is a Tory government guilty of rank double standards.
“At the same time that ministers are refusing even to discuss the subject of pay with our nation’s nurses, we now discover they got around their own pay freeze last year by giving out record numbers of non-cash vouchers to Whitehall staff instead.”
One Conservative official said the practice of giving civil servants non-cash reward and recognition schemes was also adopted by the most recent Labour government.
Most Whitehall staff received their rewards in the form of vouchers from Edenred, a digital platform that provides employee reward schemes, and gift cards, redeemable in outlets including Clarks, Haven Holidays and the Edinburgh Woollen Mill.
The company’s website tells its public sector clients: “It may not always be possible to give pay rises, but with hundreds of ways to save on spending, you can help stretch your people’s pay further.”
Labour has not established exactly how much was given to civil servants in the form of non-cash vouchers; three big departments — health, defence and environment — have not provided the information.
Of the 16 departments that did provide data, the Foreign Office came out on top. It paid out £9.9mn in reward vouchers to staff last year at home and overseas, up 16.6 per cent over the past four years.
The Home Office was second, with £6.6mn worth of vouchers purchased in 2021-22, compared with £1.2mn in 2018-19, a 461 per cent increase in four years.
The government said: “Reward and recognition schemes have a positive impact on staff engagement and morale.
“Non-cash vouchers are standard practice across government and are used to mark the significant contributions of junior staff who have worked on specific projects.
“All individual awards follow an established approval process to ensure value for money.”
Public sector pay is set to be a huge issue in 2023, as unions wage a campaign of strikes for higher salaries while prime minister Rishi Sunak attempts to contain the country’s overall pay bill.
