The TaxPayers' Alliance - Media Coverage

Daily Express: Letters: 'Sickies' in health service are occupational hazard

IF anyone from the TaxPayers' Alliance thinks public sector health workers 'pull sickies', they're welcome to swap places with my wife and I and see how long it is before they fall ill ("£3.8bn: That's what our sicknote plague costs each year", August 20).

In the 30 years we've worked in health, we have, between us, contracted pneumonia, scabies, influenza, chest infections and severe back problems - all from contact with patients. All these conditions, which we consider occupational hazards, necessitated us taking time off work.

Perhaps the alliance's chief executive, Matthew Elliott, could justify his claim that we receive better wages than in the private sector. Furthermore, don't forget that public sector workers are themselves taxpayers.

Tony Bennett, Brookville, Norfolk

Western Mail: Top civil servants earn more than First Minister

THE 30 highest-paid civil servants in the Welsh Assembly Government together earn at least £3.3m, the Western Mail can reveal.

At the top of the list – with salaries of between £160,000 and £165,000 – are Dame Gillian Morgan, the Permanent Secretary, and Ann Lloyd, Chief Executive of NHS Wales.

The data shows top civil servants continue to earn significantly more than the Assembly Government Ministers responsible for policy.

The First Minister receives £78,355 on top of a basic AM’s salary of £50,692. Cabinet members are paid a top-up of £40,645.

Corin Taylor of the Taxpayers’ Alliance said: “If you’re spending a great deal of taxpayers’ money you should be accountable for what you do and how you are remunerated. If people are doing a good job and their details are out in the open we won’t begrudge them.”

Ten of the 30 civil servants with the largest salaries work in health divisions. They include Dr Tony Jewell, the chief medical officer, who, with earnings of between £155,000 and £160,000, is the third highest-paid official.

He is followed by Gareth Hall, director of the department for the economy and transport, at between £135,000 and £140,000. On the same band is Dr Gwyn Thomas, who, as director of Informing Healthcare, is charged with encouraging better use of information in the NHS.

In six and seventh place are Jeff Buggle (£130,000- £135,000) and Bob Hudson (£120,000-£125,000) – both directors in the department for health and social services.

Finance director Dr Christine Daws is eighth, on between £115,000 and £120,000, the same salary band as Simon Dean, the director of service delivery and performance management in the health and social services department.

In the same band is Derek Griffin, chief executive of Cafcass Cymru, the body which looks after the interests of children involved in family law proceedings. The Assembly Government’s HR director Bernard Galton, and Martin Sykes, chief executive of Value Wales, are each on between £110,000 and £115,000. Value Wales exists to promote “better value for money in public services”.

Richard Davies, the director of the department for public services and performance, Mike Hopkins, head of the lifelong learning and providers division, and Dr Jane Wilkinson, deputy chief medical officer, are all paid between £105,000 and £110,000.

Of the next 15 top-paid officials, six are on between £100,000 and £105,000, and the remaining nine, between £95,000 and £100,000. The data was obtained through a Freedom of Information request by the Western Mail.

Liberal Democrat AM Peter Black said the high wages were justified if the most talented staff were employed. Devolution would not be a success, he argued, unless policies were executed at the highest standard.

Conservative AM Alun Cairns said: “Is it a marketable rate? We need to look at the marketable rate in England and make sure it’s comparable in Wales – no more or no less.”

Dave Penman, head of operations for the FDA, the union which represents senior public servants, said: “The level of salary reflects the size of their jobs and responsibility.”

A spokesman for the PCS union, which represents rank and file civil servants, said the focus of members’ concerns was not senior managers’ pay but the need to secure pay rises in line with inflation.

Daily Express: £3.8bn cost of our sicknote plague

By Gabriel Milland, Political Correspondent

THE true cost of Britain’s public sector “sicknote culture” emerged yesterday as a new report revealed that days off work cost taxpayers £3.8billion a year.

A survey also showed that state employees take significantly more days off than their private sector colleagues.

Teachers, health workers and civil servants take an average of almost a fortnight – 9.8 working days – off sick every year.

According to the Chartered Institute for Personnel and Development which conducted the research, “stress” was the major cause of long-term absence in the public sector.

Eight out of 10 public sector employers blamed stress, compared with six out of 10 in the private sector.   

But that prompted fury from campaigners who want to make Government more efficient.

Matthew Elliott, chief executive of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said: “The idea that the public sector is more stressful than the private sector is ludicrous.

“They have better wages, gold-plated pensions for their old age and cast iron job security – no-one in the public sector ever goes bust. 

“It’s time they realised that hardworking taxpayers are not there to be taken advantage of. It’s not fair for public sector workers to pull so many “sickies” at the expense of taxpayers.”

The CIPD said the average annual cost of sickness per employee is £666. With 5.7million people on the public payroll, the bill facing the taxpayer is higher than it has ever been at £3.8billion a year.

Shadow Minister for the Cabinet Office, Francis Maude, said he was concerned that taxpayers’ money was being thrown away.

He said: “Poor management must be to blame for the worrying levels of absenteeism in the public sector.

“More needs to be done to address these problems, not only to ensure that taxpayers’ money is properly spent but also to promote the wellbeing and job satisfaction of public workers.”

Managers told the report’s authors that they believe around 12 per cent of staff taking days off were malingering.

But just 65 per cent of public sector employers discipline staff for “unacceptable” absence compared with 76 per cent in the private sector.

Service workers in the private sector take the lowest number of days off, just 7.2 a year on average. But even in private sector manufacturing – where the researchers could have expected to find plenty of industrial injuries – the average employee took just 7.4 days off sick per year, far less than the 9.8 days across the public sector.

Public sector pay has soared in recent years and accounts for over 12 per cent of national income, according to the Institute of Fiscal Studies, at a total cost of £161billion a year.

And virtually all public sector staff – unlike just 17 per cent in the private sector – also have access to final-salary pension schemes. The vast majority can retire at 60 with a guaranteed, inflation-proof retirement.

The report found that central government workers took 11 days off on average and local government workers were absent for 10.1 days.

The highest level of sickness was ironically in the NHS where staff took an average 11.7 days off. Broken down into manual and white-collar sector, the most absence-prone staff were manual workers in education who took an average of 15.1 days off a year.

The main reason given by public sector workers for taking time off is “stress.”   

Many of those suffering from stress blamed it on an increased workload and the pressure to meet targets.

However, the report did find that absence has declined among public sector staff over the last year, down from 10.2 days per worker to 9.8 days in 2007.

In the private sector, absence got more common as organisations got bigger – but size made little difference in the public sector.

The CIPD found the highest levels of absenteeism are in the North East of England where the average member of staff is absent for 11.3 days a year.

In contrast, London has the best figures in both the private and public sectors with an average of 7.8 days spent being absent across all sectors.

Glasgow Sunday Mail: £3M OVERTIME BONANZA

By TOBY McDONALD

SCOTLAND'S army of civil servants last year pocketed almost £3million in overtime.

The cost of Scottish Government staff's extra hours is almost 10 per cent of its wage bill - and up £200,000 on 2007.

Each of its 6000 workers earned an average of £500 overtime despite an SNP pledge to slash public sector wage bills.

Conservative finance spokesman Derek Brownlee MSP, said: "If we have overtime we must ensure it is properly scrutinised and only authorised where it is absolutely necessary."

The overtime rise came despite an increase in the number of civil servants.

The TaxPayers' Alliance, said: "If you are getting more staff through the door but struggling to get the job done in time, there is obviously something wrong."

Alex Salmond's party face a "summer of discontent" after the breakdown of public sector pay talks earlier this month.

A Government spokesman said: "We are committed to delivering an environment in which all staff can achieve a healthy work-life balance."

Guardian.co.uk: Tim Davie: BBC's marathon man with a colourful track record

Tim Davie has never been averse to making big career decisions. At 28 he made the call to brand both a Concorde and the Daily Mirror in Pepsi blue - now he is hanging up his marketing spurs to run the BBC's audio and music operation.

The quietly efficient Davie has made much of his three-year tenure at the BBC so far, with his integral involvement with the iPlayer broadband TV service launch a high point. Yet he almost ended up working for ITV.

Davie left his senior marketing role at PepsiCo Europe in 2005, ending the nine-month hunt to replace Andy Duncan as the BBC's marketing director. But he had reportedly been offered the top ITV marketing role six months earlier, after Jim Hytner moved to Barclay's Bank.

The 41-year-old is known for his commitment and focus. Davie's near-elite time of three hours and ten minutes in this year's London Marathon is testament to his drive, a trait that came in handy when asked, upon joining the BBC, to axe a significant number of the-then 480-strong marketing and PR department.

These characteristics will come in handy once again as he attempts to become the first executive in the BBC to make the transition from marketing to one of the corporation's most senior production and broadcasting jobs.

Davie's £200m-plus audio and music annual budget is, coincidentally, nearly identical to the marketing outlay he helped splash for Pepsi in 1996 when, aged 28, he had his first media splash moment as the man behind Pepsi Blue.

Until, perhaps, the disclosure of figures in the Taxpayers' Alliance Public Sector Rich List 2007 revealed him to be the top-paid public sector communications officer, taking home £406,000 last year.

Davie joined Pepsi in 1993 after cutting his teeth as a marketer at Procter & Gamble, working on male toiletry brands.

The bedrock skills learned at companies including P&G and Unilever, where Davie's BBC predecessor Duncan also learned his marketing lessons, have served him well.

P&G had spotted Davie early, snapping him up while he was studying English at Cambridge, where he was president of his college union.

There are, of course, the whispers from some quarters that as a marketer Davie lacks understanding of the programming side of his new role.

However, to call the director of marketing, communications and audiences a role that is just about making ads is disingenuous.

The marketing role taps into all parts of the BBC's output and includes a significant element of research, planning and content creation relating to BBC audiences.

Davie is also a director of Freeview and of Digital UK, the body set up to oversee digital switchover, as well as one of a four-strong board for Freesat, the free-to-air satellite joint venture with ITV.

"It is a very TV thing to think that you have to know the product," said one BBC source. "In reality it is very much a leadership role. You have to know how to run a business, not make a programme."

Still, if one thing is certain it is that Davie is unlikely to be shaken from his avid commitment to running, some might call it fanatical, which it is said leads him to pound the pavements of foreign cities for relaxation when away for the BBC.

One thing Davie will not have to worry about is how to improve upon his recent rating in a trade magazine as the 16th most powerful marketer in the UK - one place behind ITV's Rupert Howell and five places behind Channel 4's Andy Duncan.

But with a new role and new team running BBC network radio Davie might struggle with the invite list to the 10km fun run he organises. The starting point is his home, part of an annual fundraising effort in line with his role as a trustee of Children in Need.

Guardian Comment is Free: Matthew Elliott: Pay restraint begins with parliament

Caught in a perfect storm at least partially of his own making, Gordon Brown is a little short on allies at the moment. It might be surprising, then, to read that the TaxPayers' Alliance, with our commitment to low taxes and better, smaller, more streamlined government, is – on one issue, at least – in strong agreement with him.

In committing himself and his cabinet colleagues to forsaking their pay rises this year, and pitching the government against proposed pay rises for MPs, the prime minister is doing the right thing, both for parliament and the country.

It's the right thing for parliament because for politicians to award themselves hefty pay rises at a time when the economy is struggling and ordinary taxpayers are doing some serious belt-tightening would be to fan the flames of the strong anti-politician sentiment sweeping the country. People are already outraged that MPs are employing family members to do little or no work, and that MEPs are flying to transatlantic weddings at our expense, so supporting a 21% pay hike would be a slap in the face too far for members of the public.

Labour MPs will still have a free vote on the proposals, but Gordon Brown's stance shows that the message that people are deeply unhappy at the Westminster pay and expenses culture has got through to the prime minister.

This is the right thing for the country because parliamentary pay restraint is founded on the recognition that taxpayers simply cannot afford to pay any more. These are tough economic times, and the last thing the economy needs is more money to be taken out of people's pockets, off the high street and out of the banks and poured into public sector pay. True, avoiding a pay rise for the 646 MPs will only save a small amount, but it signals the government's wider commitment to firm public-sector pay restraint.

Gordon Brown knows that demanding that public-sector pay rises stay low would be untenable if he and his colleagues were seen to be cashing in regardless. We must hope, then, that this is the first step towards making sure public-sector pay does not rise unduly.

Although the spectre of strikes will undoubtedly be looming in the government's minds, there is hope that pay restraint can be achieved without them. The motive for restraint is a good one, and public-sector workers know that their counterparts in the private sector are struggling to make ends meet, too. Unless the bumper pay rises conceded to Shell truck drivers spread to other areas of the private sector (which seems unlikely since they are more to do with the high price of oil than the buoyancy of the private sector), this consensus looks set to last.

While some union leaders talk tough and think short term, their members are increasingly aware that if taxpayers simply can't afford to pay them anything extra, there is little to be gained by making everyone's lives a misery with strikes. This was most vividly seen when Unison's members accepted a modest pay deal two weeks ago, rejecting strike action by a solid majority of 64.9%.

The reputation of parliament is at stake on the MPs' pay vote, but the example it sets could well have fundamental repercussions for the economy at large. If the government is successful and the proposed rises are rejected, they will have a strong case and a good chance of restraining public-sector pay rises across the board.

Gordon Brown is right to call for public-sector pay to be held down. It is in all our interests – those of Brown, parliament and taxpayers – that he succeeds.