Almost £100m of taxpayer cash spent on public sector staff working for trade unions
Almost £100m of taxpayers’ money was spent last year on paying public sector staff to work for trade unions, a new report has found.
The research from the TaxPayers’ Alliance revealed there were 23,592 public sector workers moonlighting as trade union reps in 2023, the second highest number on record.
This is an increase of 468 workers from the previous year and makes 2022-23 the second highest figure since the Cabinet Office began publishing the data in 2017-18. It is also the highest ever recorded in full-time equivalent terms, at 20,791 workers.
Spending on so-called “facility time” rose to £96,767,665 in 2022-23, an 8.4 per cent increase from £89,307,860 the previous year.
Experts have warned about the risk of a Labour government being unwilling to crack down on public bodies who give trade union representatives paid time during work hours, known as “facility time”.
Len Shackleton, editorial and research fellow at the Institute of Economic Affairs, said: “It is likely that Labour will increase facility time. In their ‘Plan to Make Work Pay’, attached to the manifesto, they say they will ‘introduce statutory rights for trade union equality reps’.
“As this appears under the heading ‘Facilities time’, the implication is that these reps will be given time off work for these duties.”
Transport for London – run by Labour Mayor Sadiq Khan, who has proposed increasing council tax by £37 next year - spent £8 million on facility time last year, the most of any public body. This helped to support 881 trade union representatives as the capital was frequently ground to a halt amid strike action.
The Department for Work and Pensions, meanwhile, had the largest number of trade union representatives at 1,023, costing £654,413.
The money also went to 1,059 so-called “pilgrims” who worked full-time on union duties, the report found.
More than half of these workers were employed by local authorities and another 228 by the NHS.
The public sector bodies with the most staff working full-time on union duties include NHS Lothian in Scotland, with 48, at a cost of nearly £1.9 million.
Transport for London employed 35 full-time union workers, while the bankrupt Labour-run Birmingham city council had 30 across its central and education functions. The Scottish Prison Service had an additional 25.
A further 507 public sector employees spent more than half their time working on union duties.
The previous government earlier this year set out plans to clamp down on trade union facility time, with former minister Esther McVey writing to the worst-offending councils in April.
However, Angela Rayner, the Deputy Prime Minister, told the Trades Union Congress in September last year that a Labour administration would change trade union law to ensure “sufficient facility time and access for unions to represent members”.
Sir Keir Starmer has already come under pressure from the unions since taking office, with the leader of Britain’s biggest union warning there would be “no honeymoon period” just 48 hours after Labour’s election victory.
Sharon Graham, the general secretary of the Unite union, refused to back Labour’s manifesto believing it did not go far enough on workers’ rights and protecting jobs.
She told the BBC: “I am glad we have a Labour government [but] I am the leader of a trade union and my main focus is jobs, pay and conditions for workers.
“So I am either going to be seen as a critical friend or a pain in the proverbial.”
Maxwell Marlow, director of research at the Adam Smith Institute, said: “The TPA’s [TaxPayers’ Alliance] excellent research has exposed some considerable and expensive flaws in the internal governance of our public institutions.
“While we should be encouraging entrepreneurialism and industriousness, it should be common sense that taxpayer-funded facilities should not be used for these activities. Government offices are not WeWorks, and it should remain this way.”
John O’Connell, chief executive of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said: “Brits will be furious that thousands of staff who should be providing public services are moonlighting for the trade unions instead.
“After years of intense industrial action disrupting the vital services that taxpayers pay so handsomely for, it will add insult to injury for many to learn that they have effectively been subsidising the strikes.
“The new government should recognise the significant savings that could be made by clamping down on the worst excesses.”