Mind the pay gap

Ted Tedford

Limit the pay of civil servants so that none is paid more than the PM. That would bring the public sector average down a fair bit.

(Although under the current incumbents of Parliament I suspect that principle would be distorted to increase the pay of the PM and of MPs, rather than vv.)

basementcat

Lower tax banding for Private Sector workers might be a start. Would mean that while your actual pay might be lower, your take-home after tax would be greater. It would also bring the cost of employment down for businesses. That and scrapping NI, to be replaced with the more american theme of private healthcare - though that's another kettle of fish.

Actually, that does make me wonder. Why do people in the public sector pay taxes at all? Since the funding comes from the government, ergo our taxes, are Public Sector workers in effect not bankrolling their own wages? Cutting their pay but exempting them from tax would probably cut down on administration within HMRC and the Inland Revenue, meaning we could get rid of swathes of them, lowering the cost to the nation's coffers.

James

Reform public sector pensions

Remove the additional days holiday that civil servants get for the Queen's birthday

Remove any management role that is not Operations, Finance, Management, HR or Legal - i.e. remove diversity offices and other non-existent roles.

Make redundant all civil servants between roles

Lock in a maximum headcount for Government departments. If one department increases in size another one must shrink.

By actively cutting the state's headcount and keeping it under control - employees will have no choice but to work in the private sector.

Bishop Hill

How about a wholesale bloodletting the public sector?

Andrew Cadman

Not only that, but the public sector needs slimming down from the bloated state it has got into.

No above inflation pay rises for several years is an obvious but politically difficult way.

Apart from schools reform, the other way to deal with this would be to introduce competition between local authorities through the localism agenda.

Introduce a local sales tax and truly devolve financial and managerial accountability. That is the only way you are ever going to put pressure on high spending local authorities where the council is run for the benefit of its employees.

Chris lancashire

It has taken 10 years to get here, it's going to take at least 5 to roll it back.

For a start, convert all public sector pensions to money purchase. Secondly, a complete ban on recruitment for 24 months.
Third, replace the inane "targets" culture with some (half) decent management.

Dave Kingston

I think there may be two proximate causes for this difference - roughly £27k against £24k. One is local government abolishing manual worker grades and implementing equal pay reviews over the past year or so, which equalised (female) dinner ladies and (male) park keepers.

The other is a system of public sector pay grading and evaluation that makes no allowances for variations in regional labour markets; an Environmental Health Officer in London should be on the same grade (except London weighting) as one in Bradford. Likewise a Staff Nurse or Head of History.

From your figures, average public sector earning increases from 2004-7 were about 5% pa, about double the annual pay awards; regradings and grading differentials would account for the other half.

Wight Tory

You could for new posts have time limit enforced contracts for these positions, it wouldn't stop those taking the jobs renewing their contracts if the posts become available, but would have a limited "pay out" compared to the job for life climate that appears to be the case at the moment. It wouldn't reduce pay levels as such, but it would stop the culture of once in you've got it made. MP's and Councillers have to be work on these terms, there's no reason why the performance of those at the coal-face so to speak, can't work to this perfomance related post either.

C Powell

(1) Freeze all recruitment; and (2) Freeze all pay increases. MPs could set an example by agreeing to a 10% cut in pay - as the Irish did - and a drastic cutting back of their "allowances" to only those permitted by the Inland Revenue for all taxpayers. They shoud also agree to convert their pensions to money purchase schemes, a change which will have to be made to all public sector final salary pensions. These would be a start.

Rhoda Klapp

This disparity is as nothing compared to the pension scandal. In an age when we may expect to be thirty years in retirement, index-linked final-salary pensions are worth a massive amount, approaching seven figures as a fund value. About £400k for that £452/week person, by a rough calculation, corrections welcomed

cuffleyburgers

Apart from the obvious need to lay waste to the quangocracy, my preferred solution to overpaid public sector "managers" is to make approval of compensation packages a public process via pulic meetings for all those earning above say 80000.

After all, as tax payers we should have at least the same rights as shareholders, more in fact since we have no choice in the matter.

The process could be relatively easily accomplished via large public meetings.

Nicholas

One of the problems will be to break the vicious circle that the more people the national socialist state employs the more "work" is created for it to manage. And the more work is created . . .

The public sector does not need to compete on the market or make market driven cost benefit cases for its own expansion which is driven by a profligate government with a blank cheque. The seemingly limitless supply of money comes from us but allows the state to run at a huge loss, no strings attached.

The covert public sector of quangos and fake charities are also a problem, hiding their true cost but at the same time driving additional cost into the overt public sector through the dubiously beneficial "changes" they preside over.

The staff costs for jobs where it is difficult if not impossible to quantify any direct benefit is huge and growing. By and large the public sector is unaccountable to the public for the creation of ridiculous jobs to police ridiculous policies. Everyone rolls their eyes and moans when some of these jobs are highlighted by the Daily Mail but nothing is done about it. The lunacy has its own momentum.

The public sector has the mandate and luxury to be able to meddle in everything, pronounce on everything and control everything. Unless Cameron gets a grip on this we are heading towards becoming a quasi East Germany where the real political power is held in a stifling bureaucracy of millions of departments, offices and officials.

David

"the next government will need to somehow limit the incentives to chose public above private", while simultaneously improving the class of candidates for teaching jobs?

Don't stagnating private sector wages simply reflect a globalised economy where unskilled work can only command a rate of pay that allows the employer to compete with foreign firms?

A higher median wage suggests nothing so much as a public sector with a less extreme wage distribution. Private sector salaries may have been overcompensating the top earners at the expense of the majority of staff.

MattLondon

Someone said "Limit the pay of civil servants so that none is paid more than the PM. That would bring the public sector average down a fair bit." This would make a negligible difference. And please distinguish between "Civil Servants" and "public sector".

Hawkeye

I saw a proposal to slash 30% of all public sector salaries over £50,000 and it is obscene for the BBC Director General to be creaming nearly £1m per year for salary.

So, slash top salaries down, freeze recruitment and slash "five-a-day" quangoes immediately. Lose "golden goodbyes", in fact outlaw them.

Obnoxio The Clown

Sack the lot of them. The entire British Empire ran on 2000 bureaucrats. We don't have an empire any more, so we probably only need 200.

Chris Gilmour

Decimation perhaps?

AngloWelshDragon

Trouble is the public sector is now such a massive voting bloc and, to use an unseasonal phrase, turkeys don't vote for Christmas.

Any incoming government wishing to massacre the public sector needs to keep its intentions pretty low key in their manifesto.

The Bellman

@Chris Gilmour: This could indeed be a useful method of culling State employees, as well as reducing the 'ecological footprint' of government. But I think we need to kill more than 10%.

Geoff

Slashing public sector salaries over £50k wouldn't make the blindest bit of difference to the median figure. The mean, yes.

Seems like Cameron was right to launch a crusade for better maths teaching if coffee housers don't even know the difference between the two.

mart

Focusing on individuals' pay is not especially useful, and reminds me of an "envy" approach to economics that I don't often see in the Spectator.

Personally I don't mind what people's pay is. It might even be a good thing to keep salries in the public sector high, to ensure the best people are attracted to apply for the jobs.

We do need the best people, don't we?

Tiberius

C Powell has it, but I would make the pay freeze for 5 years, recruitment 2 years, and abate the starting sum being put into money purchase schemes by the average amount of pension lost by private schemes since 1997 (client state roll-back).

No one is made redundant (aren't they lucky) but if they don't like the new conditions, they can always try to earn a crust in the private sector.

cuffleyburgers

@ Chris Gilmour

Decimation not enough, unless repeated annually for about 20 years.

Rhoda Klapp

The first sentence mentions an average, the others the median. Neither are a correct basis for comparison, which should be like-for-like jobs. With pensions and job security taken into account. Of course in Civvy street you can't get a private sector job snatching children from their families, so occasionally it's going to be hard to compare.

Max Kaye

Chris Gilmour asks "Decimation perhaps?"

No. 1 in 10 is not nearly enough.

A 50% reduction in public sector workers will not only save a fortune but see a doubling in the rate of productivity.

Verity

If the servants are being paid more than the masters, you must cut their emoluments and privileges right back.

Mart, Britain has a very shabby bunch of people in the public sector. We may need the best people, but we don't get them.

And, as I keep banging on about, Anglo-Welsh Dragon, disenfranchise the public sector. (And the beggar sector.) Non-wealth creators should not have a say in how the wealth produced by others is spent.

Tomrat

2 phase plan:
1. Make tax receipts come via local council, not income tax; this would increase our take home pay whilst raising our council tax bill by anywhere up to 3 time what it is now - this would have the dual effect of informing the electorate and making politics more representative of the people.
2. 2 Parts:
a. Ask all public sector workers to take a pay cut to bring salaries in line with private workers (MPs could show solidarity by reducing their wage by a similar amount)...
b...and if that doesn't work, or the unions have an outcy, fire all non-essential staff (i.e. anyone who is does not work on front line services; nurses, doctors, schools, police, etc..) and make them reapply for their jobs - reduce the salary at this point (but by not as much) and cull the overall numbers (or, better yet, keep the pay the same but remove the final salary pension scheme).

Post-Callaghan this is exactly what both Maggie and Reagan did to the bloated public sector and all-powerful unions.

Modern government is too much in the pockets of those who work for it rather than those they work for; this needs to be addressed.

lpuk.org

Big Alec

Let me just add some common sense to this debate. I work as a Multicultural Awareness advisor at Edinburgh City Council. I currently work a 45 hour week and for that I get paid £40,000 a year. If I did the same job in the private sector I'd get double. However, I'm a public servant and I believe in delivering good public service - especially when there's such racism and homophobia in our society. My job is very important and if it wasn't for public servants like me this country would be a cauldron of race hatred and homophobia. I see my job - which is to help people understand issues affecting minorities,and to also make them aware of their latent racism and sexism and homophobia - is of vital imporance if we hope to establish a just and civilised society. Unlike some of the people who have left messages on this thread, I believe in giving something back to society!

Trumpeter Lanfried

Remove incentives to empire building. If a section's payroll increases by 10% the manager should take a 10% pay cut.

Verity

In addition to disenfranchising the public sector so they can't vote themselves rises and privileges, remove all non-jobs, like diversity administrators, "outreach" leeches and the blood suckers on every quanqo. Then step on the quango and squash it flat. Get rid of every state-funded translator and interpreter. If people are too stupid to speak/read English, they should be shipped back. Set a legal ratio of population to employees on every local government body. Caerphilly county borough council, for example, employs over 9,000 people (making it the biggest employer in the area) to serve a population of 117,000. There should be a legal ratio of council workers to taxpayers.

Hawkeye

Geoff said: "Slashing public sector salaries over £50k wouldn't make the blindest bit of difference to the median figure"

I could not care less about the "median figure".

I'm not proposing this to make the public/private sector pay tables look more equal. I'm proposing that the government spends one hell of a lot less money each year.

All those earning £50K+ would be paid a lot less, they are well above the median national wage and they still get to keep their jobs and their gold plated pensions. None of them lose their jobs. The government gets to recoup a lot of money to add back on to the national balance sheet to reduce the impact of Labour's slash-n-burn policies.

Rhoda Klapp

Big Alec, nice one. Well nuanced.

Andrew Forbes

Big Alec; no you wouldn't get double in the private sector. The private sector doesn't employ Multicultural Awareness advisors, at least, none that aren't lawyers. Your assertion that without your ilk "this country would be a cauldron of race hatred and homophobia" is total rubbish, and an insult to the intelligence of the rest of us. Racial attitudes are changing because of education, the media, and parenting. If councils didn't employ your ilk, absolutely nothing bad would happen at all. Your job is useless, and unnecessary. I note you are only an "advisor", which means that you must have a manager, and if you're on £40k, then he/she must be on about £70k. That's very good money. This completely appals me, when I think that every wretched council in the land is probably saddled with a Multicultural Awareness department. Your whole department is a complete racket, an extortion of the taxpayer who's currently struggling to pay for food, and deserves to have his taxes spent with a little more respect for how hard he had to work for them. If you had a conscience you'd resign and apply for a job sweeping the streets, which is 1 of the few council services that the public actually needs, though 1 most councils are trying to cut.

Verity

Andrew Forbes - I, too, felt my blood pressure making my ears pop, but I think Rhoda K, above, was rather quicker off the mark than either of us.

Smart Alec

I'm a Communities Football Awareness Coordinator employed by Erewhon Council. I get £40K pa. If I didn't do my job, LITERALLY no one in the area would know about football or how to play it. Worse, many of the people I tell about football would end up as mindless bigots as a result of having nothing to do and no one from The Guvvermint to tell them how to behave.

I believe in putting something vanishingly small back, but in taking out almost twice the national wage for doing it.

Rhoda Klapp

Forbes, pay attention, it's a pisstake.

Big Alec

Andrew Forbes: Your response to my email is a disgrace. Yes, I have a manager, who just so happens to be black. According to you he shouldn't be getting £70,000 a year (or whatever it is). Why? Because he's a black man and because he's trying to redress the vile racism in our society. The racism and sexism and homophobia that people like you represent. Would you be making the same point if he was white and had gone to a posh private school. I think not.

Nicholas

" . . . if it wasn't for public servants like me this country would be a cauldron of race hatred and homophobia."

Rubbish. And you actually claim to be bringing some common sense to the debate?

Andrew Forbes sums it up nicely and your own post reveals your own prejudice, ignorance and discrimination against those who don't believe in the "thought crimes" your New Labour masters have invented.

The Bellman

Big Alec: Quality satire.

David

To bring some ACTUAL common sense:

If the median income in the private sector is lower, it is because the people at the top reap larger rewards while most staff can only earn what is 'competitive' in a globalised economy. Also, do these figures exclude bonuses from being counted as 'wages'?

Public sector jobs, such as nurses and teachers, are skilled and not open to competition from emerging markets. This, in conjunction with less unequal salary structures, is enough to explain higher median incomes.

The UK still has lower public spending than most comparable EU or OECD countries.

Andrew Forbes

It's a very good wind up, indeed, Big Alex. Congrats. I did think of including some text to have both bases covered, as if I, too, were being ironic, but I take my hat off to you. I did, and still do, believe that some public "servants" would genuinely write what you have written. But it occurs to me, now, that they wouldn't be posting on the Spectator. Your second posting is equally clever, as you realise that making your black manager homosexual and/or disabled would have been a step too far. Congrats

quadratus

Bellman (4.43)
My Sainted Aunt!But I reckon Big E. means it. I would
trade him in for a brain surgeon any day. OMG

Cogito Ergosum

How about demanding that all public servants have A-level maths?

JimBob

McGabe will stop at nothing. Bribing the public sector, ghost voters in Glenrothes, smear campaigns, BBC progaganda, false statistics everywhere - and like Mugabe he'll start using force when people don't vote the 'right' way.

Alf Tupper

Big Alec.

Best laugh I've had for ages, Keep 'em coming.

TGF UKIP

Now if only we had an opposition party which didn't see its first priority as appeasing public sector employees and their unions.

Big Alec

Thanks guys. Just wanted to see how long it would take before I was rumbled. (Well done Rhoda Klapp!) Actually, Big Alec represents everything I despise: he's the physical embodiment of modern left wing ideology and its pained obsession with multiculturalism. God help the man or woman who dares to question his views. Those people are just racist(unless they happen to be black or Asian, in which case they're oppressed victims of society). He has a second class degree in Sociology, reads the Guardian, and works in some expensively furnished council office. Needless to say he is completely saturated in political correctness and self-importance. Frankly, I've met so many people like Big Alec recently, and they've annoyed me so much that I thought it would be fun to ridicule his type, as you simply can't debate with them.

AngloWelshDragon

Big Smart Alec - you are the daddy!

Nicholas

Big Alec, you had me going. But the sting in the tail of your satire is the fact that you have actually met "so many people" like that.

Nicholas

Big Alec, you had me going. But the sting in the tail of your satire is the fact that you have actually met "so many people" like that.