Should civil servants be allowed to use a voluntary severance scheme, as Stuart Black has?
Published: 11 April, 2008
No - It's claimed that Stuart Black merited his severance pay for 'taking a risk'. This redefines risk. If I were offered a six-figure sum to take redundancy, I wouldn't consider myself to be running any risk at all. That was two years of his final salary, and if a supposed high-flier couldn't find suitable employment within two years, there would have to be something seriously amiss with him. This whole episode is a disgraceful waste of public money that should never have been allowed to happen. Graham Barker