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“Our daughter Olivia is 18 months old and my wife is expecting another baby,” he said. “The chance to spend more time with my children offsets the slight reduction in salary.

“My wife and I are from Yorkshire and so our parents live quite a distance away. Extra time off means we can visit them for more long weekends and gives them more chances to see their granddaughter.”

While private sector employees pay for extra holidays from their pay packets, there is growing anger over some public sector staff who are taking time off at the expense of the taxpayer. This is despite repeated pledges by the government that higher spending on public services should be accompanied by more efficient working practices.

Last week’s holiday package for station staff was criticised as a ludicrous waste of taxpayers’ money by business leaders.

The deal gives workers a 35- hour week — they are actually working 37½ hours and can “bank” the extra 2½ hours to take later as days off.

Adding together holidays, bank holidays and “banked” days, the Tube staff now get 52 days — or 10½ weeks. If normal weekends are added, they have 43% of the year off. Underground drivers are now trying to win a similar deal.

Police forces have also come under fire for its holiday entitlement. Officers’ working arrangements allow them to stack up so much overtime they can claim as much as five months’ holiday in one year.

One full-time constable for the Metropolitan police, with a salary of £30,000, reportedly manages to accumulate so much time off that he lives in New Zealand for five months of the year.

Police officers are expected to report for duty 40 hours a week, but those who work extra shifts are granted “rest time” in compensation. A common practice is for officers to work long hours seven days in a row and then take the next week off.

Despite worries among some business leaders that workers are too demanding, unions last month launched a campaign for three extra bank holidays.

Brendan Barber, general secretary of the Trades Union Congress, said this was necessary to bring Britain closer to the holiday levels of other European Union countries.

There are already moves to more European work patterns. Improved rights to maternity and paternity leave have been brought in and Britain has also introduced EU working time regulations, which stop most employees having to work more than 48 hours a week.

Ruth Lea, director of the Centre for Policy Studies, said: “I cannot see us going down the road of a very short hours and long holidays culture because it does not work. The experience of France and Germany, where the shorter working week has made these countries uncompetitive, has shown us this.”

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