Anger at 'city salaries' for public sector chiefs » Communities » 24dash.com

Campaigners hit out at "City salaries" for public sector bosses today after revealing the 10 highest earners were paid 40 times the salary of a rookie nurse or police officer.

Figures compiled by the TaxPayers' Alliance showed there were three seven-figure pay packages and 60 more individuals picking up £250,000 or more a year.

And they showed that the top dozen earners in the NHS were getting an average £183,000 a year each - nearly 10 times the starting salary for a nurse.

The Alliance added together details of salary, bonuses, incentive plans, benefits-in-kind and, in certain cases, pension contributions as recorded in official publications.

Top of the rich list was Bob Kiley, who was paid £1,146,425 as Mayor of London Ken Livingstone's transport supremo.

He received a unprecedented public sector settlement worth nearly £2 million when he quit the post in January and remained a £3,200-a-day consultant.

Others in the £1 million bracket were Royal Mail Group chief executive Adam Crozier (£1,038,000) and Network Rail chief executive John Armitt (£1,027,000).

The two bodies accounted for the other five of the top eight, just ahead of British Nuclear Fuels chief executive Michael Parker (£635,751) and BBC Director General Mark Thompson (£619,000).

Top earner in the NHS was Richard Granger, chief executive of NHS Connecting for Health, which is in charge of the much-troubled introduction of the health service's new IT system. He got £285,000.

Sir Nigel Crisp, who received a peerage after being removed as NHS chief executive and the top civil servant at the Department of Health earlier this year, was being paid £215,000 a year.

Among what the TaxPayers' Alliance dubbed the "most surprising" remuneration packages was the £443,00 awarded to James Stewart.

He is the chief executive of Partnerships UK, an investment bank set up by the Treasury to advise on PFI deals, the controversial system to fund public services

The Alliance said PFI had "burdened the public finances with billions of pounds of hidden debt".

It also claimed the £245,199 paid to the chief executive of Welsh TV channel S4C Iona Jones was the equivalent of £2.35 from each viewer of its most popular programme.

Robin Evans, the head of the British Waterways, which recently announced plans to axe 180 jobs, got £241,368.

The ex-director general of the Department for International Development Masood Ahmed - now with the IMF in Washington - got £220,000.

Richard Bowker, who left the Strategic Rail Authority with a £366,000 payoff, now gets £200,000 to run Partnerships for Schools.

While the Child Support Agency faces the axe after a series of failures, chief executive Stephen Geraghty took home £180,000, the report said.

And Sir John Gieve - now a £229,000-a-year deputy governor of the Bank of England - was paid £175,000 as the chief civil servant at the Home Office - declared "not fit for purpose" by Home Secretary John Reid.

In television, there were two half-million-plus packages at Channel 4, where Director of TV Kevin Lygo got £565,000 one year and chief executive Andy Duncan £549,000.

BBC Deputy Director General Mark Byford was paid £456,000.

The heads of nine regional development agencies in England and Scotland were paid between £157,000 and £195,000 apiece, the report said.

The 171 people on the list - who all earn more than £150,000 - get an average £5,000 per week.

And it appears the large salaries are rising faster too - with those on the list enjoying an 8.4% pay rise between last year and this - double the national average.

Matthew Elliott, chief executive of the TaxPayers' Alliance, said: "Taxpayers will be shocked at the scale of these massive pay awards.

"Large numbers of people in the public sector are effectively being paid City salaries.

"It is not surprising that taxes keep going up when the salaries for the public sector's top executives keep rocketing."

The salaries also came under attack from the Tories.

Shadow chief secretary to the treasury Theresa Villiers said: "Front-line staff in our public services do an enormously important and valuable job and the news today of escalating salaries in the Blair/Brown quangocracy has to cause serious concern.

"If we're going to get good value for money for the taxpayer and ensure public spending is focused effectively on delivering front line services, the Chancellor has to take a much tougher line on quangos and bureaucracy and he shouldn't be shelling out for million-pound salaries."

Shadow trade and industry secretary Alan Duncan added: "When Bob Kiley is paid nearly ten times more than the Prime Minister, then the world has gone mad.

"People should be rewarded for their competence and the risks they take. A lot of these payments seem crazily out of kilter."

Copyright Press Association 2006