Cameron plans to cut ministers' pay

Chris

My (conservative dominated) local council has just hired a chief executive at £180,000 a year. Perhaps Cameron should start by cutting some of these people down to size. About a third of that would have been enough for the level of responsibility and performance involved.

cuffleyburgers

Cut number of seats, and cut the number of westminster hangers-on, then bonfire of quangoes - how difficult can it be?

Vulture

Cameron is piling up major problems for his Government. MPs' anger with his policy of drawing the waggons of his rich boys' clique (Osborne, Maude, Gove, Letwin, Duncan, Lansley et al) into a circle over exes and throwing everyone else outside to the wolves means that private anger with him in the Parliamentary party is now approaching toxic levels. Many prospective Tory MPs coming in at the next GE are well to the right of Dave's clique on a range of issues from Europe to the Environment. If he slashes their pay on top of all this he may find himself leading a Govt that is supported by his Cabinet but not by the party.
Heath made the same error and look what happened to him.

C Powell

"It also places Shadow Cabinet ministers, who are not as rich Cameron and Osborne, under financial press"

Are you for real? They will earn a salary of c. £120 - £130K (+ all the benefits) - about 5 times the average salary - and they will be under financial pressure? Ah, diddums! No-one forced them into politics; they chose it. And if they chose it just to make money, well we're better off without them.

Ray

For a good insight into why politics is now in danger of becoming a rich man's games see http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/article6795286.ece

Irene

I think he is going down the wrong road - the whole MP's expenses debacle was because they hadn't had a proper increase in their salary for years. I think MP's have been hammered enough - what they earn to quote Boris is 'chicken feed' compared to chief execs and the like right across the board.

DW

Chris - I live in the London borough of Wandsworth, conservative run, population pushing 300,000 and I wouldn't begrudge the CE here that salary. The huge budget needs to be extremely well managed in such a diverse area, and the decisions about what services to provide and how to provide them can have a major effect on the well being of the community. The teams in each council department need to be highly professional and extremely well managed. I don't know which is your local council, but if it's Wandsworth, I would say it was value for money + it's all delivered for the cheapest council tax in the country.
I think a CE in a council deserves a lot more than an MP.

Diogenes

Um, not a bad move in itself, but I'd suggest that Cabinet ministers, even now, are by no means the most egregiously overpaid public sector employees. It is often pointed out how X or Y public sector employee "earns more than the Prime Minister".

cuffleyburgers

@ DW

How difficult can it be to organise a spot of road sweeping and to collect dustbins?

The problem is precisely that councils now do far too much. They should be halved, and the scope of their activities trimed drastically to the necessary essentials of running a town.

Suki

This is one strength Cameron does have: to read the public mood.

So what if loads of backbenchers are unhappy?

Until every single Conservative MP displays the sort of integrity and probity of Ann Widdecombe and Norman Tebbit, then they have nothing to complain about.

They are going to be judged together from now on - it's time to pull together and not let the side down.

Chris

@DW
And with no risk whatsoever. They can't go out of business and they pretty well aren't sackable. Anything more than the pay of the duty manager of a smaller branch of Tescos is utterly unjustifiable.

@cuffleyburgers
I know what you mean, but they don't actually do much that's any use. When we had snow over the winter and a lot of blocked roads, the council was invisible. They have loads of jobsworths - they can harass useful local services like the pubs from here to eternity, but they're not adding much. We really could have massive spending cuts without making any difference. The Conservatives need to drop all the Hannanite "local" rubbish (along with Hannan himself). Local government is a money pit. Its main function over recent years has been to bribe the useless with pretend jobs in the hope that they'll vote for Gordon. The last thing we need is more localism.

Occasional Ostrich

"Politics is now in danger of becoming a rich man's game."

Oh, you mean we should go back to when politics was run properly?

C Powell

@Ray: Politics is not becoming a rich man's game. On the contrary. Going into politics makes you rich. As we have seen - it's not just the salary and the gold-plated final salary pension but the fact that MPs have at our expense accumulated property which is theirs to do with as they wish even when they stop being MPs despite the fact that we have paid for it.

The real problem is that they think they should be earning City style salaries and then go round bleating about how much poorer they are when in fact they earn amounts beyond the dreams of ordinary people. That is why Duncan's bleating about "rations" and this unnamed Cabinet Minister about how he can't afford to live on a handsome six-figure salary is so offensive to those outside the Westminster bubble.

A bigger point is this: there will have to cuts in public spending and many of those cuts will be borne by people who are doing worthwhile jobs e.g. people providing care services to the elderly in their own homes (as applies to my own neighbours). If they are to bear this necessary pain, then those at the top, starting with the PM and the Cabinet (and all those other highly paid public sector workers) need to bear that pain as well, just as happened in Ireland. Otherwise it will look as if the "little people" get hurt while Westminster looks after itself.

Pete-s

This current mob have bloated the pay of numerous quangos, etc to a huge degree. He will have to have some moral comfort point from which to say. "You are grossly overpaid by the public for what you do", a justification for saying that, will need more than just a Ministerial paycut.

Rob C

I'd personally echo many of the comments above and in particular those in relation to local councils. The £1500 we pay for a band-D, 3 bed semi is excessive and twice what it was in 1997. Like most, our income is far from double what is was in 1997 - it's actually LESS! A bottom up reassessment of council tax and public spending is necessary. For starters, I'd cut council tax by a third and if that meant civil service cuts of a third to then so be it - as mentioned above some of these 'executive salaries' are unacceptable. On a local economic level, it costs 2p per minute to park in most local car parks and £3.40 for me to travel by bus to the nearest town (2 miles) - twice what it would by car - and we wonder why town centres are losing out to retail parks and internet shopping? A more healthy local economy benefits everyone - including the tax take for local councils if half the shops are no longer empty! The tax & spend culture of the last 12 years needs to stop and we need to actually assess what things are WORTH before simply asking for more. A business has to justify the cost of it's employees and it's long overdue for government to do likewise!

Jeremy

To be fair, David, I don't think it is a "ruse" or a "gesture". I think that Cameron is taking quite a principled stand on ministerial pay. If his intention is to cut public expenditure then it is only right and proper for those cuts to be mirrored by reductions in MPs pay and perquisites.

If, in relation to this matter, Ministers and MPs were to begin leading by example then it might make for a virtuous change and could even reduce the level of the public's contempt for them.

Verity

Town clerks, re-named "chief executive", getting £180,000 a year! I am appalled! Are you people daft to be putting up with this?

"I think that Cameron is taking quite a principled stand on ministerial pay." The way he took "a principled stand" on the chimeric "global warming", since changed to "climate change", when he booked a flight to an ice floe in Sweden where he stood looking stupid in a parka, upstaged by two glamourous Huskies? He's a jerk.

Compare him with the handsome, well presented conservative thinker Daniel Hannan and despair.

Hysteria

@ Chris - I don't think your swipe at Hannan and localism accurately represents the argument he is making in The Plan.....

The reason the present system does not work is the lack of effective systems at the local level to allow the customers/consumers/voters any meaningful say in how things are run.

Open primaries, as an example, is one way of increasing the democratic oversight we desperately need across many aspects of public endeavour.

The increase of unelected, expensive and politicised bureaucracy is crippling the nation and our ability to sustain ourselves (far less have any meaningful international role)

DW

Chris - and Cuffley .. I wouldn't like to think they weren't sackable. I should certainly hope they are.
Wandsworth certainly runs more than road sweeping, rubbish collection and street lighting. There are vast numbers of children going through education in the borough, plus all those using social services. Adoption, fostering, parks, planning and considerable development, asylum seekers, sports, pollution, roads, housing etc.
Would you rather this was organised at central government level? Until that day comes, this is the domain of the CE.

JohnAnt

Duncan is unlikely to become a minister after his recent faux pas: so it won't affect him.

Hysteria

DW - interesting list - but how many have to be provided by local authorities.

In my subdivision here in Houston I get trash collected twice a week, with mixed recycled waste collected weekly. A hotline to arrange pick up of large items. All for the princely sum of around $140 per year.

We have a paradign in the UK - sadly a creeping drift in the US towards the same - that only "government" can or should organise and deliver services.

it's nonsense of course - it's just what we have been conditioned to accept - to our great detriment.

Brian E

I would rather see Cameron cut the number of ministers, to half or even less. How many ministers were there in Churchill's or Atlee's cabinets? Jobs under the ministers are for senior civil servants who might actually have some idea about what they are doing and can give real advice when needed. Why have a minister for sport, what on earth is that to do with the government. Why a minister for women, they are the majority sex, there should logically be a minister for men! In doing so you would also get rid of all the paid underlings and save considerable sums of money.

Verity

DW - Yes, I would prefer that "asylum seekers" - aka "illegal immigrants" - be dealt with on a government level. The council can't deport them. The government can.

Sevo Slade

Let's get serious. Outside of the City, the vast majority of people in private enterprise -- senior management and business owners included -- make nothing like the bloated levels of remuneration sucked in by thousands and thousands of very average and unimpressive council and quango officials, to say nothing of their locked-in and massively generous pension plans. There has simply got to be some new sanity injected into the private-public imbalance, and if this is the first step in that direction, it is very welcome.

DM

Quite agree Hysteria that the private sector can deliver (better) on some (/parts) of these. The rubbish, eg, is subcontracted already, and from what I can tell, does the job satisfactorily.
The main point I make is that this is a big inner city borough with all the problems that brings, and the CE in charge of running and keeping efficient that whole brief, should be rewarded accordingly. BTW, for a family household of six, we pay just over 100 pounds a month council tax.

As for Cameron proposing ministerial pay cuts...by all means if it sets an example to the country at large that minsters will tighten their belts too, but am more inclined to agree with Brian E that a lot of government could be cut in size first before remuneration.

RC

All politicians should be paid the median national income. I'd prefer 0 but the median would be fair and wouldn't involve taxing the poorest to pay extravagant salaries and exes. It will also get the troughers out and eliminate professional politicians.

People should only be in politics after they've accomplished a great deal in their careers. Make a pile and then actually devote yourself to public service.

They should also have to pay for all of their staff either personally or through donations.

After you do this, you can then have a bonfire of the quangos and local government - no public salary (outside of judges, police, military, and security services) should be greater than the national median. Get rid of useless drones destroying value and force them to the private sector so that they create real value.

Hysteria

DW - thanks for the reply. But even though sub-contracted, you still pay Wandsworth - right? This puts the customer (you) two steps away from the contractor, who will see Wandsworh council as their customer - not you!!!

this is the fundamental difference - I pay the contractor directly, and if the neighbourhood gets poor service - we change the provider!!!

In the UK we have kinda/sorta understood the concept of free enterprise and competition, but have not really grasped the nettle.....

C A Melsom

Perhaps we should calulate council tax in the same way. Median. The People of Wandsworth and for that matter Westminster would not be very happy. The main reason for the low tax in Wandsworth is the size of the Government Grant. Maybe the Government should take a median figure for the grant too. The treasurer of our council tells me that if we received the same grant as Westminster or Wandsworth, our council tax bill for HCC would be nil.

C A Melsom

The cost of councillors and their allowances across seven counties in the South and South West in 2007/2008 was almost £25million