British Prime Minister David Cameron’s salary is lower than of 172 senior bureaucrats working in Whitehall. The coalition government in the UK published the salaries of the highest-earning senior civil servants on the Cabinet office website as promised by Mr Cameron.
The Prime Minister’s annual salary is £150,000, however, Mr Cameron in the first Cabinet took a five per cent pay cut for himself, lowering it to £142,500.
The Cabinet Office published names, job titles and salary level of senior civil servants with salaries more than £150,000, the first time the information was made public officially.
Britain’s top earning bureaucrat is John Fingleton, office of fair trading chief executive, whose annual salary with allowances comes to £279,999. NHS chief executive David Nicholson gets £259,999 and Joe Harley, the department for work and pensions IT director general and chief information officer gets £249,999.
The Chief of the Defence Staff, Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup, earns £244,999 annually and the head of the civil service, Cabinet secretary Sir Gus O’Donnell, has £239,999 annual salary.
Under Mr Cameron’s transparency drive, the coalition government will release details about government contracts over £10,000 on a single website from September and details about items of central government spending over £25,000 from November.
Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude will chair the new Public Sector Transparency Board, which will drive the cross-government transparency agenda. It will be responsible for setting open data standards across the public sector and developing the legal Right to Data.