The boss of HS2 earned more than any public servant last year – as it emerged more than 500 officials take home more than the Prime Minister.
Mark Thurston, chief executive of the project, earned £625,000 – over four times more than Boris Johnson.
In total 518 civil servants earned more than £150,000 last year. That is 5 per cent more than the previous year, and comes despite Mr Johnson’s plea to cut waste in Whitehall.
Mark Thurston, Chief Executive of the HS2 project is the UK’s highest earning public servant, with an annual pay packet of £625,000 – some four times that of the Prime Minister Boris Johnson
Some 48 people working on the controversial HS2 project earn more than Prime Minister Boris Johnson
The list includes 48 people working at HS2, the group building the controversial high-speed rail link from London to Birmingham. And 78 of them worked for Network Rail – up from 70 the year before.
John O’Connell, chief executive at the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said: ‘These figures are staggering and beyond the wildest dreams of many Brits.
‘Taxpayers want their hard-earned money spent on ensuring world-leading public services, not gold-plated salaries for well-heeled bureaucrats. Politicians need to act and clamp down on these lavish salaries.’
Network Rail provides the second and third most well-paid civil servants – chief executive Andrew Haines is on £590,000 and chief finance officer Jeremy Westlake is on £420,000.
This is despite the fact that it has been blamed for not carrying out engineering work properly, causing delays. It was announced earlier this week that it is being investigated for its poor performance on routes used by train operators Northern and TransPennine Express.
Rail regulator, the Office of Rail and Road, said it had put the state-owned firm ‘on a warning’ in relation to its work in the north-west and central region.
The ORR said performance deteriorated in 2018, when delayed engineering works contributed substantially to the timetable chaos that led to thousands of Northern services being cancelled or running significantly late. Although the industry vowed to learn their lessons, the regulator said performance had failed to substantially recover during 2019.
Of the top 20 people on the list, 12 are from Network Rail and three are from HS2. Others include officials from Highways England, the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, the Oil and Gas Authority and the MoD agency Defence, Equipment and Support. Across Whitehall, 18 civil servants are on more than £300,000 – twice the PM’s salary. The huge pay packets across Whitehall cost taxpayers nearly £94.7million – up 6 per cent on £89.3million the year before. The ‘high earners’ total does not cover highly-paid individuals at local councils or NHS trusts.
Last night Cabinet Office minister Oliver Dowden said: ‘We need to attract the brightest and the best to deliver on the peoples’ priorities and save taxpayers’ money. But very high salaries in the public sector must be justified, so it’s right that we publish this information and allow it to be scrutinised.’
A spokesman for HS2 Ltd said: ‘In a highly technical project of the scale and complexity of HS2 it is necessary to employ the right level of expertise and knowledge to deliver the programme successfully.’
Fiasco as damning report says: No one knows the final cost of the line
By TOM PAYNE
Ministers have no idea how much HS2 will end up costing, a damning report reveals today.
The high-speed rail project is running wildly over budget and will not deliver good value for money, according to a probe by the National Audit Office.
The Government spending watchdog says the benefit to the immediate economy will be as low as 80p for every £1 spent on ‘phase one’ from London to Birmingham. This rises to a meagre £1.40 for every £1 invested in the full line connecting the capital to the North.
The high-speed rail project is running wildly over budget and will not deliver good value for money, according to a probe by the National Audit Office
Construction work on the project must begin by the end of March if the first phase of HS2 is to open between 2029 and 2033 as planned, the report warns.
Even so, full passenger services from Euston to the Midlands might not begin until 2036, ten years later than scheduled –and the full line could take 20 years to finish. So far £7.4billion has been spent without a single piece of track being laid. The Prime Minister and senior ministers will decide within weeks whether to go ahead with the troubled project, scale it back or scrap it entirely. The NAO’s findings will fuel calls for a major rethink of the scheme, the official cost of which could hit £106billion – triple the original £32billion estimate.
Investigators also found that the number of HS2 staff has doubled since 2016 to 1,250.
In all, HS2’s official cost estimate of £88billion, set by the Department for Transport (DfT) in September last year, is 58 per cent more than the available funding of £55.7billion.
Construction work on the project must begin by the end of March if the first phase of HS2 is to open between 2029 and 2033 as planned, the report warns
The report says HS2’s early £7billion contingency fund was not enough to cover ‘significant increases in cost’ which emerged as issues came to light.
It is impossible to say how much HS2 will cost overall as the second phase of the line, from Birmingham to Manchester and Leeds, is at a very early stage, the NAO added. The ‘ambitious’ programme will take decades, the watchdog concluded.
‘In not fully and openly recognising the programme’s risks from the outset, the Department and HS2 Ltd have not adequately managed the risks to value for money’, it said.
Transport Secretary Grant Shapps has commissioned extra data on potential alternatives to HS2 before making a final decision on its future next month.
Last night Andy McDonald, Labour transport spokesman, accused the Tories of ‘woeful’ political leadership over HS2. A DfT spokesman said: ‘We recognise that there have been significant underestimations of both the cost and schedule of HS2 in the past which is why we commissioned the Oakervee review to provide advice on whether and how to proceed with HS2.’