Proposed by Phil Taylor
These roles are a strange hybrid. Paid like a civil servant out of taxes but entitled to do political work. The most (in)famous special advisor must be Damian McBride who has just been sacked from his job as Special Advisor (SpAd) to Prime Minister Gordon Brown. When Gordon Brown became Prime Minister he vowed to end the era of spin. As with many pronouncements from this source the walk is quite different from the talk.
This here is a House of Commons Library research note SN/PC/03813, written by Oonagh Gay, last updated 2nd September 2008. It is quite clear that there was a step change in the number of spads when Labour came to power. Essentially the number of SpAds has doubled and the pay bill has quadrupled. We might accept that some of these people are necessary to oil the wheels of the machine and it might be unreasonable to place restrictions on who has what support but we might argue that the total spend should be halved, giving up a saving of £3 million.
Saving id: Special advisors
Area: Various departments
Total saving: £3 million
Traffic light status: TBD