Top Earning Civil Servants Publicised

[Strix]

What do you think of this move? I think it is fantastic. Transparency in what the government does with OUR money has to be a good thing. But, boy oh boy, are some people going to be mad (I suspect).

news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/politics/10202596.stm

Previous governments have made much of the fact that the public sector has much to learn from the private sector. I disagree but running a large public sector organisation takes as much skill, business knowledge etc as it does to run a private sector company. The public sector isn't going to be able to recruit anyone from an equivalent level in the private sector to do the job for £150K or less. Who would take a massive pay cut for such a responsibility?

I would suggest that the PM is underpaid and that that needs to be looked at.

Someguy - actually DC only earns £140K - the MP salary is included in this. However, as the man who is running the country, I think that £250K in total is probably about right.

I can see the justifcation for publishihg the salaries for the most senior posts but not those on £58k. How could it possibly improve accountability or transparency to name those peope? It's an invasion of privacy and feels like a "name and shame".

What would be useful if you actually want scrutiny, rather than just giving the public sector a kicking, is to know how many people at each pay grade are employed in each department. Other than that this is just playing to the gallery. Grr.

Patsy99 - a lot of that is already in the public domain. Page 2 (or 49, the page numbering starts at 47) of the PDF linked to on this page for example.

This stuff has long been out there for all to see, but it isn't exciting enough for the Mail or the Government to bother commenting on, not while they're intent on public secotr bashing.

Oh yes "playing to the gallery". That is exactly what they're doing. Well put.

And from bitter experience, salaries are rarely where the majority of waste is anyway - try research contracts, rebranding initiatives, quangos, NDPB's etc. That's where you can make enormous savings...