Labour’s newly appointed ‘Value for Money’ tsar will be paid the equivalent of a £247,000 annual salary, despite a track record of overseeing projects beset by delays and spiralling costs. The Telegraph has the story.
David Goldstone, announced in the Budget as Chairman of the Office for Value for Money, will be paid £950 a day for an average commitment of one day a week, the Treasury said on Thursday.
The compensation amounts to £49,400 over the course of a year – equivalent to a full-time salary of £247,000 and significantly more than Sir Keir Starmer’s £166,786 salary.
He has been appointed to the role on a 12-month basis.
Mr. Goldstone previously oversaw delivery of the London Olympics, where costs spiralled to £9.35 billion.
That was almost four times the initial £2.45 billion estimate, based on figures cited by the Labour Government in the run-up to the 2012 Games.
Following the Olympics Mr. Goldstone moved on to run the London Legacy Development Corporation, where projects including the London Stadium and East Bank cultural district have also reported cost overruns.
He was also Chief Operating Officer at the Ministry of Defence between 2017 and 2020. The Commons public accounts committee said the following year that the MoD had been guilty of “repeatedly wasting taxpayers’ money”, while a Labour report identified £4 billion of waste.
More recently, he was criticised by the Public Accounts Committee after taking a £168,000 bonus on top of a £311,000 salary for overseeing non-existent renovation work on the Palace of Westminster.
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