Around 800 public sector workers in Scotland are being paid full salaries even though the jobs they were hired to do no longer exist, costing taxpayers at least £27 million a year, according to an investigation by The Sunday Times. The newspaper gathered the figures through freedom of information requests to 70 public bodies, including health boards, councils, Police Scotland, Scottish Water and NHS 24.

The workers would ordinarily have been made redundant, but they remain on the public payroll because of the Scottish National Party's ban on compulsory redundancies in the public sector, in place since 2007. Instead, staff whose posts disappear are placed in redeployment pools, where they generally keep their pay and benefits while they wait for another suitable job to open up.

The longest waits

The investigation found 255 workers who had been without a fixed job for more than a year, and at least 49 who had remained on a full salary for five years or more after the position they were hired for became obsolete. In the most extreme case, one NHS Highland worker has been receiving full pay and benefits for 17 years despite no longer having a specific job. The health board would not say what that person had been doing during that time, or how much they had been paid in total.

NHS Highland alone has 88 staff awaiting redeployment, with 26 of them without a permanent role for at least five years. Across Scotland's NHS, employing workers with no permanent job to go to costs £1.4 million a month, or £16.8 million a year, based on figures provided for 315 workers. The true total is almost certainly higher, because several public bodies refused to disclose salaries for staff awaiting redeployment.

Why the roles linger

Under the redeployment system, a worker whose role is abolished is supposed to be moved into a new permanent post, but there is no deadline for that to happen. First Minister John Swinney has defended the arrangement, saying workers awaiting redeployment are supposed to be given work to do until a new role within their organisation comes up. The Scottish Government has said its policy of no compulsory redundancies remains in place.

Social Security Secretary Shirley-Anne Somerville acknowledged the delays when she was asked about the findings on BBC Radio Scotland, saying redeploying staff whose jobs have been axed can "take some time", while insisting that every worker whose role is abolished should be redeployed into a new permanent job.

Political row grows

The revelations have drawn sharp criticism from opposition parties and business leaders. Scottish Conservative finance spokesman Craig Hoy demanded that the Auditor General for Scotland investigate, describing the cost as a misuse of public funds. The Conservatives estimated that the £27 million a year would be enough to hire 584 junior doctors. Hoy later challenged Deputy First Minister Jenny Gilruth on the issue during an exchange in Holyrood.

Audit Scotland, however, said decisions about the public sector's approach to redundancy are a matter of policy, which is outside the Auditor General's statutory remit. Reform UK said the Scottish Government should take immediate steps to cut the "non-working" workforce, while the Scottish Liberal Democrats called on ministers to explain what they described as a "bizarre" situation.

Two of Scotland's leading entrepreneurs, Sir Tom Hunter and Lord Haughey, also weighed in, calling the arrangement a "slap in the face" to taxpayers and urging ministers to look again at a policy they said would never be tolerated in the private sector. The row comes as Scotland faces a projected £5 billion deficit, and with ministers under pressure to explain how health board reform can happen while the redundancy ban stays in force. No change to the policy has been announced.