Andy Burnham’s Greater Manchester Combined Authority claims the 34 people whose trade union work takes up at least half their time only cost the taxpayer £121,000.
Finding this hard to believe, I checked the Government’s own data for what is called ‘trade union facility time’ for 2024-5. Oddly, this excludes Greater Manchester, London and similar fiefdoms.
Even without these, the taxpayer pays £89.8 million to allow civil servants, teachers, doctors, police officers and so on devote their time and our money to their various unions.
The civil service bill alone runs to £13.7 million with – every accountant will be delighted to learn – £2.29 million spent by HMRC, exceeded only by £3.2 million at the Ministry of Justice.
Our schools and universities spent £19.3 million on union activists while 312 local councils were in for £29.4 million (Birmingham’s bill was the most at £1.8 million).
The National Health Service devoted £18.9 million to unionists, including, we must suppose, the time it takes for the average junior doctor to get her act together sufficiently to organize yet another strike.
The police unions cost the taxpayer £5.3 million while ‘other’ public sector bodies cost us a further £3 million. Here, the BBC stands out: its 316 union reps cost the licence payer £775,000.
I still think GMCA’s modest £121,000 is a made-up number but, quite possibly, so are most of the others.
Birmingham NHS bosses warn of disruption ahead of strike - BBC News
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