Andy Coulson's salary has escaped scrutiny in today's list of top civil service pay. But his reported £475,000 salary is likely to make headlines next year.
Readers may be wondering why David Cameron’s Director of Communications and Planning, Andy Coulson, was not included in this morning’s list of “top civil service fat cats” splashed across a number of papers.
The simple answer is that the list only includes salaries paid up to 31 March 2010. But Mr Coulson, currently working in No. 10 Downing St, will be expected to top next year’s list if his reported salary of £475,000 turns out to be nearly half true.
The top civil servant on the list, John Fingleton earns just 59 per cent of the former News of the World Editor’s salary, which is equivalent to 20 times the national average.Someone on the London living wage of £7.60 would have to work for over 34 years to earn the reported amount.
Last month, David Cameron announced that Will Hutton would lead a review into public sector pay. According to the Guardian:
“Before the election, the [Conservative] party promised to set up the fair pay review to ensure no senior manager in the public sector could earn more than 20 times the lowest paid person in their organisation.”
When asked why Mr Coulson’s salary was excluded from the list, a Conservative party spokesman laughed and diverted Left Foot Forward to the Cabinet Office. A civil service press officer outlined that only salaries paid in 2009-10 were included.
34 Responses to “Coulson escapes salary headline”
Theo Blackwell
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joe fd
There is a deeper irony here. It emerges from this public sector pay league table that the highest paid civil servant is in charge of fighting private market corruption. In whose interest would it be to cut the salary, status and resources of this role? Might it be that you need to pay a poacher’s salary to get a good gamekeeper?
More broadly, this is a timely reminder of how far the govt’s and media’s focus has deftly slipped from the market to the state. Shouldn’t we be focused on reforming the private sector – since it was catastrophic market failure that was, you know, the cause of the financial crisis in the first place? But, I guess, all that questioning of global capitalism was so 2008.
Quarrenne
RT @leftfootfwd: Coulson escapes salary headline http://bit.ly/9ZERkg
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Irma Gorton
RT @leftfootfwd: Coulson escapes salary headline http://bit.ly/9ZERkg