If you, dear reader, have visited parliament in recent years, you might have had the misfortune to be confronted by one of the new-fangled orange traffic marshals popping up around the estate. Given the crumbling state of the Commons, Mr S is constantly querying whether this army of apparatchiks is really necessary – given that most cars crawl through the estate at around five miles per hour. But, alas, it seems that the bosses in the Palace of Westminster know best…
Still, all that ‘elf n safety shtick does come with a price. Steerpike has done some digging and it turns out that the price tag is quite considerable. An impressive £4.3 million has been shelled out to pay for these marshals since April 2019 – the equivalent of more than £2,000 a day, according to several Freedom of Information requests. On being told the figures, one enraged parliamentary staffer responded: ‘Bloody hell – I feel sick.’ In their reply to Steerpike’s FOI, the House of Commons said:
The Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 requires the House to ensure – as far as reasonably practicable – the safety of employees and visitors to the estate. Part of a larger package of measures, the safety benefits of traffic marshals cannot be achieved by other means. Their use is kept under constant review and marshals remain in place only when needed.
But Elliot Keck, head of campaigns at the TaxPayers’ Alliance, fumed to Steerpike: ‘No wonder public spending is out of control when parliament itself has fallen asleep at the wheel as its own costs have spiralled. Taxpayers will be expecting the authorities to slam the brakes on this unnecessary spending and find a much cheaper system for managing traffic on the estate.’
One for SPAFF perhaps?
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