£2.5m pay packet for judge in charge of child sex inquiry
THE judge leading the Government’s inquiry into historical child sex abuse will cost the taxpayer £ 2.5million, it emerged yesterday.
To the fury of victims, the Home Office has given Justice Lowell Goddard a £360,000 annual salary.
The senior New Zealand High Court judge will also receive £110,000 a year to rent a UK home and £1,000 a month for utilities bills, plus a car and driver for official business.
Taxpayers will also cover the cost of four business- class return flights home for the 66-year-old and her husband, plus two return economy flights a year for her children.
Justice Goddard will pick up about £2.5million overall over the course of the inquiry – expected to last until 2020.
The deal pushes the senior judge close to the very top of the public-sector pay league – days after Chancellor George Osborne announced a fouryear public-sector pay freeze.
Only Bank of England governor Mark Carney, earning £480,000 a year with £250,000 for accommodation, is believed get more. Home Secretary Theresa May announced the inquiry last year following allegations of an Establishment cover-up of a child-sex gang in Westminster in the Eighties involving politicians and prominent figures.
It will investigate whether public bodies – including Whitehall departments, local authorities, the NHS, the Church and the BBC – failed to protect thousands of children from ‘industrial scale’ abuse.
Details of the pay package were disclosed on the inquiry’s website by Justice Goddard, who will pay UK tax at the highest rate of 45 per cent.
But revelations of the sums she will rake in were met with anger last night.
Andi Lavery, 43, who says he was molested at Catholic boarding school in the mid-1980s, said: ‘This is a kick in the teeth. Me and thousands of other abuse survivors have never received a penny in compensation despite our lives being torn apart when we were young. It is disgusting that so much money is being spent paying the judge.
‘It is nice work if you can get it. I am having to fight the Home Office to pay a few hundred pounds to cover my expenses when I travelled to London for meetings before the inquiry was set up.’
Labour MP John Mann said: ‘It is a ridiculous amount of money and disproportionate to the role. The judges are so cos- setted. She will have to prove her worth very, very quickly.’
Keith Vaz, chairman of the Commons’ home affairs select committee, welcomed Justice Goddard’s ‘ openness and transparency’ in publishing her pay deal but noted the panel first asked for the information in February.
Sir John Chilcot, who headed the report into the Iraq war, was paid a daily rate of £790 – £205,400 a year – while Sir Brian Leveson, received his £ 197,000 judge’s salary for chairing the inquiry into Press standards and ethics.
Four panel members of the inquiry will be paid £565 a day – £146,900 a year if they work five days a week. Ministers have approved an inquiry budget of £17.9million for 201516. Staffing costs, such as barristers and researchers, are expected to account for 41 per cent of the budget.
The judge said child abuse ‘cannot be calculated in monetary terms’, adding: ‘It is the inherent right of every child to experience a childhood free of sexual abuse and intimidation.’ She is the third person picked to lead the inquiry after her predecessors stood down over perceived conflicts of interest.
A Home Office spokesman said: ‘Justice Goddard has a high level of relevant experience and expertise and as she said herself last week – this is the most ambitious public inquiry ever established in England and Wales.’
‘Nice work if you can get it’