Harman confirms senior public pay restraint

16 Dec 09
The leader of the House of Commons, Harriet Harman, has indicated that future heads of public bodies can expect to receive considerably lower salaries than has been the case in recent years.
By Lucy Phillips

16 December 2009

Equalities Minister Harriet Harman has indicated that future heads of public bodies can expect to receive considerably lower salaries than has been the case in recent years. 

Giving evidence to a joint committee of MPs and peers on December 15, Harman said the new chief executive of the government’s equality watchdog will be paid less than its former head Nicola Brewer, who was on a salary of £185,000 a year plus a bonus until she quit the commission in May.

The equalities minister said the appointment of a permanent head of the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) would be delayed until after a review of top level public sector pay had been conducted by Bill Cockburn, chair of the senior salaries pay review body. But she admitted to the joint committee on human rights that the interim arrangements were proving expensive after it emerged that temporary director-general Neil Kinghan was being paid £1,000 a day to head up the body – equivalent to a salary of £250,000 a year.

Harman said the vacancy had come at a time when ‘there is a key concern about the public finances and a key concern about top pay in the civil service’.  Despite being accused by Labour MP and committee chair Andrew Dismore of ‘throwing a lot of money at the problem’, Harman said the commission should not be ‘hung out to dry’ for keeping the interim arrangements in place, however costly, until the review by Cockburn had concluded (although she could not confirm a date for this). 

She added: ‘It is important to make a permanent appointment at a rate of pay which is recognised to be fair and appropriate.  Nowadays what the previous chief executive was paid would not be considered that.  There's going to have to be a big rethink about these top jobs at public expense,’ said Harman.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown last week announced a crackdown on senior salaries in the public sector. In addition to the Cockburn review, the chief secretary to the Treasury will in future personally approve all salaries over £150,000 and any bonus payments of more than £50,000, Brown said.

Harman, who is deputy leader of the Labour party, also defended her controversial decision to reappoint Trevor Phillips as chair of the equalities watchdog.  Five commissioners resigned from the body, which was set up in October 2007 and took over the responsibilities of three former equality commissions, earlier in the year because of concerns over Phillips’ leadership. 
  
‘I have a great deal of confidence in Trevor Phillips.  He was not just a default option.  I have seen his work over a number of decades and he has my 100% backing,’ Harman told the committee, adding that it was ‘always difficult bringing together disparate organisations’.  

A report by the consultants Deloitte also criticised the management of the commission and its chair, and found that the leadership lacked team ethos.  The commission’s board has since been overhauled, with only two of the 15 members remaining from the original set up. 
 
Jonathan Rees, director general of the Government Equalities Office, told the committee that many of the issues raised by Deloitte, including concern over the quality of financial information given to the board, had ‘improved significantly’ over the last six months.

Harman said the new board had ‘extra expertise’ and she expected the commission to go ‘from strength to strength’.  She rejected criticism from the Liberal Democrat peer Baroness Falkner that eight of the new members had links to the Labour party, one to the Liberal Democrats and none to the Conservatives. 

About 650 people had applied to be commissioners and these were the ones who fitted the brief and had the necessary experience, said Harman. Rees added that political allegiance was not relevant to the application process.      



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