Jonathan Ashworth – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Ministry of Defence

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Jonathan Ashworth on 2016-02-25.

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, how much his Department has paid to staff in overtime in each of the last 24 months.

Mark Lancaster

The payment of overtime is permitted where a Ministry of Defence (MOD) employee below the Senior Civil Service is required to work beyond conditioned hours or on days that they would not normally be required to work. There has been a conscious effort to reduce overtime costs in the MOD, line managers must scrutinise overtime and encourage time off in lieu as an alternative. As a guiding principle, overtime should only be granted when taken in direct support of current operations, it is of essential business resilience, or when posts require routinely long hours and time off in lieu no longer represents a realistic alternative.

A summary of the amount of MOD expenditure on overtime payments in the last 24 months is shown below.