Home Office is fined £367k for paying sex inquiry chief too much
THE Home Office has been fined almost £367,000 for breaking the Government’s own pay cap when it appointed the latest chairman of the beleaguered child sex abuse inquiry.
It was punished by the Treasury for failing to get clearance in advance for Professor Alexis Jay’s £185,000 salary.
The amount exceeded the Government’s senior salary pay cap by more than £40,000.
Since 2010, all jobs with salaries of more than £142,500 have had to be signed off in advance. Then- chancellor George Osborne brought in the rule decreeing that no public servant should be paid more than the prime minister – who at that time earned this amount.
The Home Office’s latest accounts show it breached the ‘spending control processes’ when negotiating the salary of the head of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse in 2015/16.
The £366,900 fine also relates to the pay of the inquiry’s three panel members – one of whom, Drusilla Sharpling, received a basic salary of £152,424 in 2015-6.
The inquiry has been beset by problems since the beginning and is already on its fourth chairman. The first two – retired judge Baroness Butler-Sloss and solicitor Dame Fiona Woolf – both stepped down before the work even began after questions were raised over their establishment links.
New Zealand High Court judge Dame Lowell Goddard – who received costs for rent and utilities, including flights for her and her family to and from New Zealand, while chairing the inquiry – quit last summer and Professor Jay was then appointed by Home Secretary Amber Rudd.
The inquiry’s chief lawyer, Ben Emmerson, also resigned last year after being accused in a BBC Newsnight programme of groping a member of staff at the inquiry’s headquarters. The QC was cleared of wrongdoing following a probe commissioned by Matrix Chambers, the law firm he co-founded. But earlier this month the investigation into the claims was dismissed as a ‘whitewash’ after key evidence was kept secret.
A Government spokesman said: ‘The Treasury has the power to consider fines for departments who breach agreed spending control processes, including those relating to senior salary approval.
‘The Home Office have since reviewed appointment procedures to prevent further such breaches.’