Why public sector fat cats fear freedom law

THE hospital boss on a pay package of £1.2million. The £700,000 police chief. NHS dentists earning £690,000 a year. The vice-chancellor of Britain’s worstperforming university on £618,000. A £54,000 allowance for an assistant chief constable just to move house. And the health service manager paid £850,000, who still had the nerve to claim a £1.40 bus fare on expenses.

Individually, any of these examples of so-called public servants helping themselves to huge wads of taxpayers’ cash would be pretty offensive.

Together they expose the scandalous culture of entitlement and avarice that has infected the state sector since the economically reckless days of New Labour, when Tony Blair and Gordon Brown pumped billions of pounds of your money into public services.

As the Mail repeatedly observed then, such a huge infusion of cash without any attempt at structural reform would inevitably result in public sector salaries soaring. And soar they did

All this week, the Mail has exposed a litany of abuses of public funds. Along with the stratospheric pay packages, we revealed an array of perks that most private sector employees can only dream of.

Gold-plated pensions, private medical insurance, loyalty bonuses, gratuity payments, generous expenses and golden handshakes are conferred as a matter of routine. One council chief claimed £2,368 a month – roughly Britain’s average wage – so he could drive a Porsche to work.

What an insult when libraries are being closed, operations cancelled, beat bobbies removed and care services cut back. Have these people no shame?

Our series, followed up by most media outlets, with the exception of – you guessed it – the public sector’s greatest cheerleader the BBC, nails the great lie peddled by the Left that there’s no room for the cuts needed if Britain is to reduce its terrifying debt.

Not a day goes by that the BBC doesn’t promote in its newscasts shroud-waving public sector lobby groups bleating about being unable to cope with the Chancellor’s austerity measures. Yet we uncovered glaring examples of extravagance and waste that could be slashed.

To justify their salaries, the panjandrums often grandly compare themselves to directors in the corporate world, despite the fact they generate no profits and enjoy glorious job security and lavish pensions of the sort that have long since disappeared from the private sector.

And for all their protestations, public spending is not falling. This year it will be £759billion – £86billion more than in 2010. No, too often the problem is not poor funding but poor management.

Ministers have applauded our expose. But how ironic that those same ministers are hatching plans to curtail the Freedom of Information Act, without which this vital investigation into how our money is being spent – or mis-spent – would have been impossible.

As Sue Cameron argues brilliantly on the opposite page, Westminster, Whitehall and local government officials hate FoI precisely because it allows voters to monitor their conduct and hold them to account.

Restricting it – as our investigation eloquently shows – would be a crushing blow to accountability and transparency in public life. And it would give town hall bosses, chief constables and NHS managers alike a licence to keep writing their own inflated pay cheques. SO Lord Rennard – aka ‘Lord Grabbyhands’ – is back on the Lib Dems’ ruling executive despite accusations that he groped a string of women activists. How perfect! An utterly ludicrous figure helping to run an utterly ludicrous party.