Crozier....................top knob!!
Posted: 23 Aug 2007, 13:30
:cfo
The bosses of Britain's top 20 quangos are costing taxpayers £6.2million a year, researchers have discovered.
This is despite Gordon Brown's promise to trim the non-accountable, publicly funded bodies.
An Economic Research Council study shows that the four highest earners each received more than £500,000 while the total cost of 'quangocracy' is £167.5billion.
Top of the public sector rich list is Adam Crozier, who was paid £812,697 last year - although with bonuses he actually earns more than £1million.
News of his outsized pay packet follows complaints of lost and delayed mail and the Royal Mail's initial refusal to allow families of soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan to send free parcels.
Next comes Michael Parker, the chief of British Nuclear Fuels, who earned £635,751.
Andy Duncan, the head of Channel 4, which receives an annual subsidy of £894million, is fourth on the rich list with a salary of £549,000.
He has come under repeated fire this year over the Celebrity Big Brother race row and the "dumbing down" of the station's programmes.
And victims of this summer's floods, who face huge bills clearing up after the deluge, may be dismayed to know that Baroness Young, head of the Environment Agency which oversaw the response, earned £200,000 last year and is 16th on the list.
Council-director Dan Lewis yesterday criticised the Cabinet Office for its growing reluctance to provide useful information about quangos and those who work for them.
The office suspended a database in April last year and disbanded its public bodies team which collected information about quangos.
But taxpayers can now check how much quangos cost on the council's web page: www.ercouncil.org.
"Nothing shows more clearly the contempt this government has for taxpayers' money than the record salaries of these quango fat cats," said Mr Lewis.
"These vast salaries show that the time is well overdue for a public inquiry into the pay awards of quango bosses.
"Who decides what they are paid, how they are chosen and how can we tell whether they're worth what they're paid?
"We need to know. Until that happens, at the very least, there should be a total salary freeze.
"Even when our frontline troops are undersupplied, underequipped, fighting and dying on a miserly £14,000 a year, this government shamelessly carries on funding the enormous salaries of these quangocrats."
Tory Treasury spokesman, Philip Hammond, said: "Gordon Brown promised 'a bonfire of the quangos'" in 1995, but check the small print and you see that Government spending on quangos has soared by £ 44billion in the last four years - £1,700 for every British family.
"Far from improving transparency and accountability, the Prime Minister has allowed quango costs to spiral while cutting back on the amount of information published about them.
"The ERC's initiative is very welcome - and necessary, given that Gordon Brown has failed in his promise to tackle the quangocracy."
Earlier it emerged that 883 quangos cost the taxpayer £167.5billion last year.
This was a seven-fold increase from the £24.1billion when Labour came to power ten years ago and more than five times the Ministry of Defence's £32billion budget for this year.
DAILY MAIL :cfo
The bosses of Britain's top 20 quangos are costing taxpayers £6.2million a year, researchers have discovered.
This is despite Gordon Brown's promise to trim the non-accountable, publicly funded bodies.
An Economic Research Council study shows that the four highest earners each received more than £500,000 while the total cost of 'quangocracy' is £167.5billion.
Top of the public sector rich list is Adam Crozier, who was paid £812,697 last year - although with bonuses he actually earns more than £1million.
News of his outsized pay packet follows complaints of lost and delayed mail and the Royal Mail's initial refusal to allow families of soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan to send free parcels.
Next comes Michael Parker, the chief of British Nuclear Fuels, who earned £635,751.
Andy Duncan, the head of Channel 4, which receives an annual subsidy of £894million, is fourth on the rich list with a salary of £549,000.
He has come under repeated fire this year over the Celebrity Big Brother race row and the "dumbing down" of the station's programmes.
And victims of this summer's floods, who face huge bills clearing up after the deluge, may be dismayed to know that Baroness Young, head of the Environment Agency which oversaw the response, earned £200,000 last year and is 16th on the list.
Council-director Dan Lewis yesterday criticised the Cabinet Office for its growing reluctance to provide useful information about quangos and those who work for them.
The office suspended a database in April last year and disbanded its public bodies team which collected information about quangos.
But taxpayers can now check how much quangos cost on the council's web page: www.ercouncil.org.
"Nothing shows more clearly the contempt this government has for taxpayers' money than the record salaries of these quango fat cats," said Mr Lewis.
"These vast salaries show that the time is well overdue for a public inquiry into the pay awards of quango bosses.
"Who decides what they are paid, how they are chosen and how can we tell whether they're worth what they're paid?
"We need to know. Until that happens, at the very least, there should be a total salary freeze.
"Even when our frontline troops are undersupplied, underequipped, fighting and dying on a miserly £14,000 a year, this government shamelessly carries on funding the enormous salaries of these quangocrats."
Tory Treasury spokesman, Philip Hammond, said: "Gordon Brown promised 'a bonfire of the quangos'" in 1995, but check the small print and you see that Government spending on quangos has soared by £ 44billion in the last four years - £1,700 for every British family.
"Far from improving transparency and accountability, the Prime Minister has allowed quango costs to spiral while cutting back on the amount of information published about them.
"The ERC's initiative is very welcome - and necessary, given that Gordon Brown has failed in his promise to tackle the quangocracy."
Earlier it emerged that 883 quangos cost the taxpayer £167.5billion last year.
This was a seven-fold increase from the £24.1billion when Labour came to power ten years ago and more than five times the Ministry of Defence's £32billion budget for this year.
DAILY MAIL :cfo
These vermin never "earn" the money given them. 
