Letters

28 February 2009

Spectator readers respond to recent articles

Bonus issue

Sir: Ross Clark (‘Big bonuses in the public sector’, 21 February) summed up the challenge we face. The Institute of Fiscal Studies figure Clark quotes of a 12 per cent premium on public compared to private sector pay should be drilled into all taxpayers’ heads the way Mrs Thatcher used to hit Neil Kinnock with figures.

At a recent Conservative event, a member of the public suggested a riposte to Gordon Brown’s lame attempt to blame the current economic crisis all on the bankers: a blanket 30 per cent pay-cut for all public sector staff being paid over £150,000 and a 20 per cent cut for those on over £100,000. This would turn the ‘Cedric Brown fat cat’ pre-1997 Blair campaign back on Brown and his BBC cronies.

I could not possibly comment, other than to say those in the room from the bureaucrat class turned pale white!

Tony Devenish
Councillor, Westminster City Council
London SW1

Sir: Ross Clark just misses the bull’s-eye. It is not the big salaries paid to public sector fat cats that are the problem. It is the fact that the jobs were created in the first place.

There is no harm in paying good salaries to public sector employees provided both that they do a good job and that the job is necessary. But I have worked in the NHS for 40 years and since I qualified in 1969 the number of managerial posts has increased exponentially, like a metastatic cancer.

Both major political parties pay lip-service to decreasing management in the NHS, but none has yet made any significant move to do so. I wrote to Andrew Lansley recently, pointing out a specific example of several jobs in one NHS Trust that could be abolished without any loss of effectiveness. He took weeks to reply and then only to say that he had passed my letter on to a colleague. So don’t hold out much hope for action from the Tories.

Robin Jacoby
Bicester, Oxfordshire

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