Freezing Senior Civil Service pay doesn’t go far enough, says IoD

Dated: 10 March 2010

Commenting on the Prime Minister’s announcement today that the pay of Senior Public Figures will be frozen for a year, Graeme Leach IoD Director of Policy and Chief Economist said:

“With public finances in such a poor state we welcome steps to restrain wage costs in the public sector. However, if the Government is serious about tackling the deficit it needs to freeze pay across the whole of the public sector with the exclusion of the armed services, not just the wages of senior Whitehall officials and various public appointees.

“We calculate a one year freeze would generate annual savings of at least £6 billion. This is the kind of measure the Government needs to introduce if it wants to demonstrate the existence of a credible plan to tackle the deficit. Trimming the pay of senior officials is not enough.”

ENDS

Contact Points

Edwin Morgan
Communications and Policy Officer
Institute of Directors, 116 Pall Mall, London SW1Y 5ED
Tel: +44 (0)20 7451 3392
Mob: +44 (0)7814 386 243
Email: edwin.morgan@iod.com
Website: www.iod.com/policy

Notes to editors

  • The IoD (Institute of Directors) was founded in 1903 and obtained a Royal Charter in 1906. The IoD is a non-party political organisation with upwards of 45,000 members in the United Kingdom and overseas. Membership includes directors from right across the business spectrum – from media to manufacturing, e-business to the public and voluntary sectors. Members include CEOs of large corporations as well as entrepreneurial directors of start-up companies.
  • The IoD offers a wide range of business services which include business centre facilities (including ten UK regional centres [three in London, Reading, Birmingham, Cardiff, Manchester, Nottingham, Edinburgh and Belfast] and one each in Paris and Brussels), conferences, networking events, virtual offices and hotdesking, issues-led guides and literature, as well as free access to business information and advisory services and a comprehensive Information Centre. The IoD places great emphasis on director development and has established a certified qualification for directors – Chartered Director – as well as running specific board-level and director-level training and individual career mentoring programmes.
  • In addition, the IoD provides an effective voice to represent the interests of its members to government and key opinion-formers at the highest levels. These include ministers, constituency MPs, Select Committee members and senior civil servants. IoD policies and views are actively promoted to the national, regional and trade media.
  • For further information, visit our website: www.iod.com
  • You can also keep up to date with the latest views from the IoD on twitter.com/The_IoD and at blogs.iod.com