Public Sector Pay

David Cameron has insisted on the publication of the salaries of public sector workers who earn more than, ahem, the Prime Minister.


So now we know that the head of the Office for Fair Trading gets £280,000 a year.

The question is, how much wiser are we?

Plenty of people earn more than the Prime Minister’s £150,000 or so – footballers, musicians, junior securities traders - but is it a relevant comparison? The National Health Service, for example, is one of the largest employers in the world. If someone has to be tempted out of a lucrative private sector job to run it, that’s OK with me. If however someone gets the job on Buggins’ turn, that we don’t need a top guy running it, I don’t think he should get the same as the Chairman of BP.

What seems to me to be important is that the government regularly reassesses how much individual people get from the taxpayer, and that we look at how much pay has risen (quite a lot in recent years).

I need to feel confident in that process, that money isn’t being frittered away in a sort of back scratching club, but I don’t feel I need to know the numbers.