Fury at taxpayer-paid staff working from Spain, France and Italy

Staff at quangos have been granted permission to work from abroad more than 2000 times since 2019. These taxpayer-funded organisations have allowed workers to fulfil their tasks overseas on 2,145 occasions.

The figures showed hundreds of staff have worked from popular holiday destinations including Spain, France and Italy. The Taxpayers' Alliance contacted 169 of the arms' length bodies under the Freedom of Information Act and 55 confirmed granting staff permission to work from abroad.

According to the campaign group's research, since 2019 permission has been granted on 361 occasions by the Office for National Statistics, 292 by the UK Atomic Energy Authority, 243 by the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency, 225 by UK Sport and 146 by the Food Standards Agency.

Of these, nearly half (873) were granted for "personal reasons". Staff were allowed to work from Spain on 131 occasions, France on 114, Italy on 89, Germany on 58 and Switzerland on 55.

Joanna Marchong, investigations campaign manager at the TaxPayers' Alliance, said: "Taxpayers are growing ever more curious about what on earth the vast network of quangos are actually doing, and why so much power has been devolved to them. Ministers have handed significant control of services and policy to unelected bodies frequently not based in London, limiting further their ability to hold them to account.

"And it's now been revealed that many staff are not just based outside of London, they're often not based in the UK at all."

Reform UK MP Lee Anderson said: "This report from the TaxPayers' Alliance confirms what we've known all along: this Government has utter contempt for hardworking taxpayers - expecting us to bankroll the entitled and lazy as they 'work' beachside. Britons have had enough of the abuse.

"Reform will put an end to this nonsense. We'll get people back to work, treat taxpayers' money with the same care and discipline we would our own, and bring real transparency back to government."

A Government spokesperson said: "We expect civil servants to spend the majority of time working from the office, and working outside of the UK must only be approved for exceptional personal circumstances such as bereavement. Many of these organisations stated do not employ civil servants and have their own working abroad policies.

"We are currently reviewing all arm's length bodies to examine where organisations can be closed, merged, or have powers brought back into the department."

A Labour spokesman said: "Kemi Badenoch appears to have forgotten the Tory government she served in oversaw the worst strikes in more than three decades. Labour is turning the page on the scorched earth approach to industrial relations we inherited from the Tories that even saw nurses striking for the first time."