£120billion of your money down the drain  EVERY year: The astonishing Whitehall waste that could send every British family on an annual luxury holiday

  • Costs include £19,000 spent by council on hiring ‘motivational magician’ 
  • Arts Council splashed out £95,000 on a skip covered in yellow lights
  • Ministers and officials ate £3 million of biscuits
  • More than £20 billion lost through fraud in the public sector 
PUBLISHED: 02:01, 15 June 2013 | UPDATED: 11:10, 15 June 2013
Wasteful spending by the public sector on useless projects costs every British household £4,500 a year - enough to 'buy a luxury holiday for every family', a pressure group has claimed.
The TaxPayers’ Alliance has identified cuts that it says could save about £120billion – effectively wiping out the UK’s budget deficit – without ‘closing a single hospital, firing a single teacher or disbanding a single regiment’.
The organisation has collated a list of ‘ludicrous examples of wasteful spending’ – including the Ministry of Defence paying £22 for a light bulb and the Arts Council squandering £95,000 on an installation comprising a skip covered in yellow lights. 
Despite Chancellor George Osborne's austerity drive, the TaxPayers' Alliance has identified a long list of ¿ludicrous examples of wasteful spending¿
Waste: Despite Chancellor George Osborne's austerity drive, the TaxPayers' Alliance has identified a long list of 'ludicrous examples of wasteful spending'
Some £19,000 was spent by Cotswold District Council on hiring a ‘motivational magician’ to boost staff morale, while Labour-run Durham Council gave chiefs a £12,000 clothing allowance, which Prime Minister David Cameron derided as ‘Geordie Armani’.
 

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In other examples:
by numbers
  • Ministers and officials ate £3 million worth of biscuits in 2011-2012 and spent £45 million on taxis to move prisoners and staff around the country.
  • More than £20 billion is lost through public sector fraud and £15 billion on duplicated procurement across Whitehall departments and councils.
  • The Home Office spent £427,000 on rubber bullets police are not even allowed tom use.
  • Crawley Council Spent £5,070 on 12,200 hot drinks from vending machines for employees, when the equivalent number of tea bags would have cost just £200.
The alleged wasteful spending - a sixth of the total government expenditure - is more than the whole of the NHS budget and five times the amount spent by the Ministry of Defence.
A spokesman for alliance said: ' This equates to a massive £4,500 for every household inn the UK - enough to give every family in the land a luxury holiday or pay their household energy bills three times over.'
In its annual Big Bumper Book of Government Waste, the TaxPayers’ Alliance recommends a number of major reforms to claw back cash, including shaving £53billion off the pay and pensions packages of public sector workers. 
This is the amount it claims these workers are being overpaid compared with the private sector average.
‘Nearly £120billion of taxpayers’ money was wasted or spent on useless projects by the Government in 2011-12,’ the report states. 
‘We have identified and listed hundreds of examples of spending by politicians and bureaucrats that can be cut without closing a single hospital, firing a single teacher or disbanding a single regiment.’ 
According to the research – which the pressure group said is based on official statistics, independent reports and media coverage – £25billion was wasted that year through inefficient public sector procurement and poor use of outsourcing, while £20.3billion was lost through public sector fraud.
About £5billion was paid out in benefits to claimants with an income in excess of £100,000, while £1.2billion was paid out in an annual subsidy to foreign farmers through the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy.
The TaxPayers' Alliance says it can identify cuts in government spending that would not cut any hospital, education or army expenses
Frontline services: The TaxPayers' Alliance says it can identify cuts in government spending that would not affect any hospital, education or army expenses

HOW OUR MONEY WAS  WASTED ON PROJECTS

Cheshire East Council spent £30,000 building two ponds for 18 newts which had been displaced by the construction of a bypass.
Arts Council paid £2.5 million to decorate the side of inter-continental trucks to promote Lincolnshire Fenlands in Europe.
The Government biscuit bill in 2011-2012 was £3 million.
Ministry of Justice spent £4.5 million to taxi firms for moving prisoners and staff around the country.
Bury Council bought £9,000 iPads for bin collectors to monitor homes that were not recycling.
Home Office paid £427,000 on rubber bullets police are not even allowed to use.
Cotswold Council hired a 'motivational magician'  to boost staff morale at a cost of £19,000
The TaxPayers’ Alliance suggests £2.9billion could be saved by scrapping the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills and Department for Culture, Media and Sport and hiving off their essential functions to other departments.
It also questions the need for high spending on locum doctors, suggesting there could be far fewer now that GPs work out-of hours far less frequently than they used to.
Matthew Sinclair, chief executive of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said: ‘George Osborne must take the golden opportunity offered by the spending review to get the nation’s finances under control and ease the burden on taxpayers.’
According to the report, tens of billions of pounds are still wasted each year and there is an enormous amount of fat left in the public sector.
'If ministers do something about it, they can give taxpayers a better deal and still provide the frontline services which people depend on. 
‘More money must be left in the pockets of struggling households who need it to support their own families and their own causes.’
The Cabinet Office insisted work was well under way to make government ‘leaner’. 
A spokesman added: ‘This Government has accelerated its work tackling waste and the Cabinet Office recently announced achieved savings of £10billion over 2012-13.
‘We are taking radical decisions to make Whitehall leaner and more efficient so Britain can compete in the global race, and we are pleased to see the TaxPayers’ Alliance recognises this – but we agree there is more to do.’