73 Holyrood fat cats paid over £100,000 as satisfaction with public services falls

Daily Mail​

3 days ago

The number of Scots civil servants earning more than £100,000 a year has soared under the SNP, the Scottish Mail on Sunday can reveal.
Taxpayers are footing the bill for a growing army of civil servants - many of whom are predominanty allowed to work from home - as satisfaction with public services plummets.
Overall, the Scottish Government now employs an unprecedented 73 mandarins who are officially ranked as Senior Civil Service (SCS) - mostly heads of various departments and directorates.
In total, this upper tier of civil servants now costs the public purse an astonishing £8.6m a year in wages, with the vast majority earning in excess of £110,000 - three times the Scottish average annual salary.
Earlier this year the SNP administration's finance secretary Shona Robison slashed millions from the budgets for the NHS, mental health and transport, claiming Scotland was facing 'enormous and growing' financial pressure.
Despite this, the number of senior civil servants employed to run the country has grown sharply - as has the cost.
At the same time, the civil service has come under fire for its refusal to abandon 'working from home' and for a 'sick-note' culture in which government staff take far more days off than workers in the private sector.
Critics have attacked the 'out of control' cost to taxpayers and accused the SNP Government of getting its priorities all wrong.
Scottish Conservative spokesman for finance and local government Craig Hoy said: 'The civil service, and the cost of it, have ballooned out of control under the SNP's watch, and by far the biggest expansion has been in those on the highest salaries.
'When Scots are paying the UK's highest taxes, but seeing worsening services, there 's no excuse for fat-cat pay packages of this sort.'
Callum McGoldrick, researcher at the TaxPayers' Alliance said: 'At a time when public services are clearly under pressure, it's hard to justify the steady growth in high-paid civil servants at the top of the Scottish government.
'With budgets being squeezed across the board, Scottish taxpayers will be asking whether ministers have got their priorities right.
'The focus should be on improving services for the public, not inflating the salaries bill in Holyrood.'
The Scottish Government recently published its annual list of Senior Civil Service staff, reflecting the situation at the end of March.
Overall there are now 73 SCS on a wage bill of totalling £8.6m. The number is higher than the 66 staff on six-figure sums last year, which had added up to a total wage bill of £7.5m.
In comparison, there were 52 SCS on £100,000 in 2023, 38 in 2021 and just 14 as recently as 2018.
The current list includes director generals of government departments - plus heads of directorates including Cladding Remediation, Covid Inquiry Response, Organisational Continuity and Heat In Buildings.
The highest paid is Caroline Lamb, director general of the health department and head of the Scottish NHS, whose salary is listed between £205,000 and £209,000 a year.
Four other staff are listed as earning over £150,000, including former Permanent Secretary JP Marks who took home £190,000 as the country's most senior civil servant before leaving in April to take up a new job as chief executive of tax agency HMRC.
He was replaced by Joe Griffin, who in his former role as the Scottish Government's director general of strategy & external affairs earned £140,000 a year.
The official responsible for the country's finances is director general of the Scottish Exchequer Alyson Stafford who takes home £160,000.
The list shows a further nine civil servants earning between £120,000 and £150,000 a year. Most are director generals of departments including Communities, Corporate, Economy, Education & Justice, and Net Zero.
Overall 45 officials earn between £110,000 and £120,000 a year - including the government's directors of Corporate Transformation, Digital, and Propriety & Ethics.
Meanwhile the public are increasingly unhappy with the public services the government provides.
A survey published earlier this year by research firm Ipsos shows almost three in four Scots (74 per cent) think public services in their local area have got worse in the last five years.
Of those, 62 per cent believe the Scottish Government is mainly responsible for the deterioration.
Half of Scots (51 per cent) say they are dissatisfied with the quality of health services, while 28 per cent are dissatisfied with the quality of primary and secondary education, and half (51 per cent) are dissatisfied with the quality of policing.
The civil service has also been criticised for clinging to the working from home policies initially imposed in the wake of Covid.
Since the pandemic in 2020, working from home or hybrid working has been the default option for many staff.
New rules introduced to try and boost productivity mean that, from October, staff will have to turn up at the office at least two days a week.
The figure is lower than the equivalent policy for civil servants working for the UK government in Whitehall, which states that civil servants must spend at least 60 per cent of their time working in the office.
However the edict has sparked complaints from some Scottish civil servants about the cost of having commute more regularly to government offices in Edinburgh and Glasgow.
Some have raised concerns about the environmental impact of driving themselves to work - while others have warned the order to return to the office is 'an attack on their human rights'.
Separately it emerged in June that Scotland's civil servants last year took an average of 8.7 days off sick - the worst recorded rate of absence in the government's history, and more than double the rate across the private sector.
Although levels of pay for SCS staff are reserved to Westminster, the size and hierarchy of the civil service in Scotland is a matter for the Scottish Government.
Responding to the criticism levelled at it, the government argued that its senior civil servants brought valuable expertise - while also vowing to deliver 'optimum value' for taxpayers.
A spokesperson said: 'Senior civil servants manage performance and delivery, and ensure the Scottish Government achieves its goals. They bring significant expertise and progress the government's plans for delivering on its Programme for Government. '
It also said its public service reform strategy will 'ensure every pound spent delivers optimum value' and will 'reduce the annual combined corporate costs of the government and Scotland's public bodies by £1 billion over five years'.