The Daily Mirror has today splashed on the fact that Rupert Harrison, chief economic adviser to the British government, has had a pay increase and is now on £95,000. Outrageous, says Kevin Maguire of the Mirror. I agree: he should be on far more.
The British government is in the most almighty financial mess and the Chancellor of the Exchequer needs good advice. The national debt is soaring – by the time you finish reading this paragraph, it will have risen by more than £95,000. Money spent on someone who can help the government control this appalling situation would be money well spent.
The Mirror says that Osborne has simply given 
his ‘mate’ a pay rise. God knows I have my criticisms of Osborne, but no one can accuse him of hiring his mates. To his immense credit, he has hired no one that he knew before entering politics – in stark contrast to David Cameron who has hired a fair number of his old mates.
You can (and I do) accuse Osborne of plenty things, but organizing a ‘chumocracy’ is not one of them. His speciality is recruitment – he somehow persuaded Mark Carney to come to Britain and govern the Bank of England. In office, Osborne has proven himself to be an unapologetic meritocrat – and if that means giving promotions when they’re due (Harrison’s pay rise from £80k to £95k comes from his appointment to the council of economic advisers), then he’ll do it. Even if the Daily Mirror will go nuts. And I admire that about him.
Osborne is, like me, a history graduate who has never held down a job outside the world of journalism and politics. He has fine political mind but needs a good economic adviser. But here’s the problem: the best financial minds are off in the City, earning closer to half a million quid. So £95k for someone of the outstanding calibre of Rupert Harrison is a bargain. He was one of the best economics gradates in Oxford, holds a PhD and worked for the Institute of Fiscal Studies before joining Osborne’s team in opposition. He’s known for his preternatural calm and is precisely the sort of adviser the UK government needs. (I’ve profiled him before, here). People like him could go straight into the City and earn a whack – Harrison chose to enter public service. I’ll bet that if he leaves politics after the election, he’ll treble his salary in a heartbeat.
Now, this is not to say that I agree with him and Osborne – I’m a critic of the tardiness on clearing the defict, and the tricksy language they’re using to describe the process. But when welfare reform looked like it was not going to happen, because the HM Treasury did not want to lose their precious tax credits, it was Harrison who made it happen. If any Cabinet member wants to know about economic policy, or anything related to the Treasury, Harrison is the go-to person. Many ministers say that a meeting with him is, if anything, more useful than a meeting with Osborne.
Many special advisers are just bag carriers, or hired to keep journalists fed with stories. Harrison is of a different mould: one of a handful of experts who bring genuine outside expertise. If (heaven forbid) Ed Miliband becomes Prime Minster then you’ll hear no word of complaint from me if spends a whack on decent advisers. Someone in a Miliband government would need to be in possession of a clue. Many Blair-era advisers – Paul Corrigan, Andrew Adonis, Simon Stevens – were worth far more than they were paid. f you’re changing things, you need high quality outside advice. The civil service machine, on its own, just won’t do.
Gordon Brown, remember, hardwired the Treasury to have a bias against tax cuts. It needed someone like Harrison to remedy that, to abolish the 50p tax and get corporation tax down. And then to make sure the Treasury commissioned reports into the effects of these tax cuts, to make the system realise that tax cuts can boost growth and revenue.
Harrison has the ability, the work ethic, the expertise – but no political ambition. If he wanted a safe seat, he’d have followed his former colleague Matthew Hancock into one. He’s interested in economics, and giving the best advice he can. If Britain is to be better governed, we need top-flight people like Harrison to spend part of their career in government, working to save the public tens of millions of pounds. Sure, multi-millionaires can afford to come into government as a quasi-retirement job, and give advice as a hobby. But if you want the very best when they’re on the way up, then it’s right that government should pay for them.
If I had my way, the Prime Minister would appoint genuine experts to run his Cabinet – but the next best thing is the ability of Cabinet members to hire (and pay properly for) genuine experts to advise them. Too much public money is at stake for this not to happen.
If we had more people like Harrison in government, knowing how to do more with less, the taxpayer would save a hell of a lot more money – and we’d be far better-governed. So the problem with people like Harrison is that there are not enough of them.
PS: I’ll leave the last word to Peter Oborne in this Twitter exchange with Maguire:
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