FAT CATS

Salaries paid to Whitehall’s top earners total as much as £29million a year. David Cameron ordered the publication of the names, job titles and deals of the 172 civil servants whose pay and perks exceed £150,000 a year. Top of the list, with pay deals expressed in £5,000 bands, was the chief executive of the Office of Fair Trading, John Fingleton. His annual package, including taxable benefits and allowances, is between £275,000 and £279,999 a year. NHS chief executive David Nicholson was the second highest paid, earning up to £259,999. Joe Harley, the IT director general and chief information officer at the Department for Work and Pensions, was third, with a package worth up to £249,999.

Chief of the Defence Staff, Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup earns up to £244,999 and the head of the civil service, Cabinet Secretary Sir Gus O’Donnell, is paid up to £239,999. Mr Cameron has promised to open up official data to public scrutiny, including, MRSA and C-difficile hospital infection rates. From November, details of central government spending over £25,000 will be published, as will council spending over £500 from next January. If all those listed by the Cabinet Office were earning at the top of the £5,000 bands, the total would be £29,254,835. Chief Medical Officer Sir Liam Donaldson is on up to £209,999 a year.

Lin Homer, chief executive of the UK Border Agency overseeing Britain’s much-criticised immigration and asylum system, has a deal worth up to £209,999. Director of Public Prosecutions Keir Starmer earns up to £199,999, as does Ofsted chief schools inspector Christine Gilbert. At the much criticised Met Office, chief executive John Hirst gets up to £174,999, while non-executive chair Robert Napier gets £40,000 for working a minimum of 40 days a year. (Source: Daily Express, Jun/10)

BBC bosses pocketed bumper pay rises at a time when thousands of workers faced redundancy and viewing figures dropped. Director-general Mark Thompson's pay rose by £160,000 from £459,000 to £619,000 and Director of television Jana Bennett's basic pay rose from £255,000 to £321,000.

Jenny Abramsky, director of radio and music, received a total wage of £322,000 including benefits and bonus, while Deputy director-general Mark Byford's total take-home pay was £456,000, including a basic wage of £403,000, up from £351,000 the previous year.

The increases come at a time when the BBC is cutting costs and axing jobs. Some 1,132 posts have already been closed, with more than 2,000 to go next year. The BBC said the pay rises were part of a two-year process to bring executives' base pay up to the market median.

Michael Grade, the BBC chairman, defended pay rises for the executives and said the rises were fair. He said senior staff should not be "punished for their loyalty" when they could earn far more in the private sector. How "loyal" would they be without the massive pay increases?

He said the corporation's top executives are underpaid and that senior staff were working at a "discount" rate, despite their recent huge salary increases. He said, "People may not like the fact that somebody running a department of the BBC can earn this kind of money but they could earn an awful lot more elsewhere." Well maybe they should apply for other jobs outside of the BBC then. (Source: Mail on Sunday, Jul/06)

Energy bosses face a grilling from MPs over massive price rises. Company chiefs will be summoned to the House of Commons to justify "fat cat" salaries for themselves while their customers face soaring fuel bills. And consumer watchdogs want the Government to outlaw disconnections, which are running at about 20,000 a year, to protect hard-up families.

A spokesman for Energywatch said, "The scale of the increases is inevitably going to lead tens of thousands of households into debt and under threat of disconnection." The call comes after Britain's major energy firms announced a series of inflation-busting price rises despite making massive profits. British Gas, which made a £288million profit for the first half of 2004, has increased gas by 12.4% and electricity by 9.4% - the second time this year its customers have faced higher bills.

Npower followed their lead with an 11.8% rise for gas and 7.6% for electricity while Scottish and Southern Energy has announced price rises of up to 9% - then boosted the salaries of five executive directors, including £615,000-a-year Ian Marchant, by a total of £460,000.

But that is peanuts compared with the boss of British Gas, whose package was worth more than £3.2million in 2003. Sir Roy Gardner, chief executive of Centrica, the parent company of British Gas, saw his pay alone soar by 40% to £1.48million. Against this background, MPs are now widening the scope of a Parliamentary inquiry into disconnections so they can question fuel suppliers about price rises.

The investigation follows the case of elderly couple George and Gertrude Bates who died in their London home in 2003 after British Gas cut them off because they missed a £140 payment. (Source: Sunday Mirror)