At the top of the rich list are GP’s who are raking in more than 300,000 a year, twice as much as the current prime minister, David Cameron who is paid £142,000 per year.
Some of the other £100,000 a year high flyers on the list include 385 teachers, 196 police officers, 832 defense staff and 2013 people in judiciary. The public sector does employ more than 6 million people, mote than one in five of the work population and 0.6 percent of which do earn over £100,000 per year.
The highest paid public servant in the survey was BBC director-general Mark Thompson, who earned £668,000 before benefits and pension payments.
Frances Maude, a cabinet office minister, said: “You don’t need to pay stupendous amounts to get good people. You can square the circle of having really good people not on telephone number salaries and massive built-in bonuses. That public service ethos is very important.”
However, Dave Prentis, UNISON General Secretary, said the findings were “another attack on the public sector”.
He added: “The majority of public sector workers will never get anywhere near these salaries. For example, two-thirds of local government workers earn less than £21,000 a year and are facing a three-year pay freeze.
“There should not be such a gap between those at the top and those at the bottom. The pay freeze will only make it worse.”
The research was carried out by Panorama in collaboration with the Bureau of Investigative Journalism and looked at 2,400 public bodies.
