Foreign aid fat cats are the highest-paid workers in Whitehall
BUREAUCRATS in charge of Britain’s bloated aid budget are the best-paid in Whitehall – pocketing nearly twice the salary of average workers.
The Department for International Development, which has £12billion a year to spend, has bucked austerity and is one of two government departments where staff costs have gone up.
Despite reports showing waste and incompetence are rife in the department, the median salary at Justine Greening’s DfID is £52,700.
Almost a quarter of civil servants in the department are now paid more than £60,000 a year. The Department for Energy and Climate Change i s not far behind, with officials taking home an average of £48,420.
The analysis, by the Institute for Government, also shows that DfID and DECC were the only two ministries in Whitehall where total staff costs have actually increased since 2010, despite deep cuts elsewhere.
The cost of the exorbitant salaries paid to DfID civil servants does not count towards the 0.7 per cent of national income the Government now has to spend on foreign aid.
Five bureaucrats at the department took home more than the Prime Minister’s £150,000, once pension benefits a nd bonuses are taken into account.
Philip Davies, Tory MP for Shipley, said: ‘It is certainly no surprise that the most wasteful government department is happy to let salaries rip for their own staff. You would think if they were so committed to the cause they would want more money from their budget spent on helping the world’s poorest and less on privileged bureaucrats.
‘Instead it is the most hardpressed in the UK who have to pay for all this largesse to make some middle-class people feel better about themselves.’
The average wage f or a full-time worker in the UK is about £ 27,600. Across the whole Civil Service, the median pay is £24,980.
Tens of thousands of civil servants have also lost their jobs through redundancies, and pay for many has been frozen.
Jacob Rees-Mogg, Tory MP for North East Somerset, said: ‘The least productive, most fashion able and Left-wing dominated ministries are, unsurprisingly, the greatest burden on taxpayers.’
DfID’s annual report shows that permanent secretary Mark Lowcock’s salary was £160,000£165,000. That was topped up by a £35,000 pension benefit – taking his total to almost £200,000.
Alex Wild of the TaxPayers’ Alliance said: ‘At a time when savings need to be made, the scale of pay, perks and expenses enjoyed by those in the public sector elite should be under constant scrutiny to see if taxpayers are getting value for money.
‘What’s more, some functions of these departments could easily be scrapped which would save even more taxpayers’ money.’
A spokesman for DfID said: ‘All our staff are paid in line with standard Civil Service rules. We have some of the lowest overheads in Whitehall and we have already reduced our back office costs by a third.’