Nearly £1million is being paid to four executives of a Government agency which has set aside £50million in funding in a bid to dim the sun, damning new figures have revealed.
The Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA), sponsored by the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology, also paid its top staff £110,000 in bonus payments alone for the 2023/2024 period.
The Government has previously vowed to reduce the number of quangos but has so far created 27 new agencies since returning to power last year.
Analysis by the Taxpayers' Alliance (TPA) found that Chief Executive Ilan Gur earned an eye-watering £457,500, including a £47,500 bonus -taking his overall earnings to nearly three times the Prime Minister Keir Starmer's £172,153 per year salary.
PA
Responding to the findings, ex-Conservative MP and Chair of the Net Zero Scrutiny Group, Lord Craig Mackinlay, said: “These crackpot ideas at vast taxpayers’ expense continue to spew out from the government, but we have long since been surprised at anything that Secretary of State Ed Miliband promotes.”
"For some, the worship of Net Zero at any cost has taken on features of a new religion. The latest endeavour of trying to dim the sun takes this bizarre adherence to cult-like levels but with unknown and potentially dangerous results.”
Mackinlay fumed: “Please Prime Minister simply sack this out-of-control Minister.”
The Government sponsored agency that the senior executives oversee has recently set aside £50million of taxpayers' cash for a variety of new programmes.
POLITICS LATEST:
Lord Craig Mackinlay said: 'These crackpot ideas at vast taxpayers’ expense continue to spew out from the government'
Wikimedia Commons
This includes experiments to reflect sunlight from Earth, releasing aerosols into the atmosphere and brightening the clouds to reflect the sun's rays.
William Yarwood, media campaign manager at the Taxpayers' Alliance, said: "Taxpayers will be furious that £50million of their cash is being splurged on madcap sun-dimming experiments — while four executives behind the scheme have raked in almost £1million in pay, and pocketed over £110,000 in bonuses."
"With families struggling under a sky-high tax burden, the last thing they need is to fund gold-plated salaries for quangocrats trying to play God with the weather." Yarwood explained:
"These crackpot schemes need to be quashed before they burn through even more taxpayers' money and do real harm."
Director of Net Zero Watch, Andrew Montford, also slated the government for making decisions
GETTYDirector of Net Zero Watch, Andrew Montford, also slated the Government for making decisions that are “clearly not for the publics benefit” as he questioned whether this was “an appropriate use of taxpayer money.”
Labour MP Graham Stringer added: “I strongly supported the creation of ARIA as a member of the House of Commons Science and Technology select committee, but I am very disappointed at the choice of what research to pursue."
"This appears to be a costly folly with very little spin off benefit; more fashionable virtue signalling."
The Blackley & Middleton South MP also said: "It is very difficult to see what would justify such large bonuses when nothing of note has yet been produced by this quango."
GB News has approached the Government for comment.
