Cabinet Office told to publish salaries of 24 secretive civil servants

22 Jun 11
The Cabinet Office has been ordered to disclose the names of 24 senior civil servants who objected to having their salaries revealed.

By Mark Smulian | 22 June 2011

The Cabinet Office has been ordered to disclose the names of 24 senior civil servants who objected to having their salaries revealed.

Information commissioner Christopher Graham said publicity now ‘goes with the territory’ for those earning more than £150,000 a year.

He said there was ‘a strong legitimate public interest in the public knowing how its money is spent’.

Names of the senior civil servants and quango bosses paid more than £150,000 were published last summer, with the exception of the 24 who withheld their consent.

When a member of the public later asked for the names under Freedom of Information legislation, the Cabinet Office refused to publish them, citing data protection concerns.

But Graham has now said the Cabinet Office must publish the names, although it need not say why the 24 people affected wanted their details withheld.

He said: ‘If you are earning over £150,000 working for a body that is funded by the public purse then there is now a legitimate expectation that your name and salary details will be disclosed.

‘Being open and transparent is an integral part of being accountable to the taxpayer and, like it or not, this level of disclosure goes with the territory.’

He dismissed data protection issues, saying only publication could deliver the required transparency and accountability, and that this would ‘not cause unwarranted interference to the rights and freedoms of the data subjects’.

A Cabinet Office spokeswoman said the decision was welcome. ‘Today’s ruling by the ICO has given an important and much-needed clarification on the balance between transparency and the protection of personal data,’ she said.
‘The government is absolutely committed to being the most transparent in the world.

‘As part of the government’s commitment to opening up data, civil service charts known as organograms, which include the names, job titles and salaries of all civil service directors and more senior civil servants, have recently been published in a more-user friendly comparable format on data.gov.uk.’

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