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Camden News - by SIMON WROE
Published: 18 September 2008

David Lee

Charges of ‘hypocrisy’ levelled at health bosses over wage rise

As £8million is slashed from care budgets, executives approve 64 per cent raise

MENTAL health bosses have been accused of “hypocrisy” by angry service users after they awarded themselves “inflation-busting” pay rises while cutting patient services by more than £8 million.
Governors of the Camden and Islington NHS Foundation Trust voted in favour of the 64 per cent wage hike for non-executive directors (NEDs) at a quarterly board meeting at St Pancras Hospital last Thursday.
The decision comes in the wake of the Tottenham Mews day centre closure and bed reductions on wards as part of the Trust’s controversial “cost improvement programme” which has axed millions from the services budget.
Service users on the board – whose work remains unpaid – blasted the proposal.
Service user David Hayes said: “I think it’s perfectly reasonable to expect the chair and its NEDs to be commensurately rewarded but what I find a matter of hypocrisy is the level of inflation-busting rewards proposed.
“It stands against the backdrop of the cost improvement programme in which service users have had to suffer.”
Ross Spectreman, another service user, added: “It does seem hypocritical. On the one hand services are being cut and closed – we are told there is a need to make cuts.
“Service users would say: ‘How can they justify it?’”
The raise will put the Trust’s chairman, Professor David Taylor, on £37,000 a year for his part time role – up from £22,500 – making him better paid than the chairman of the Camden Primary Care Trust (PCT), John Carrier.
Similar raises will be given to other non-executive top brass.
Governor Jason Roberts said : “We will be mass-rewarding non-executives in the backdrop of massive service cuts – I don’t think that looks good.”
Trust bosses defended the move, saying better salaries would mean better services in the long run.
Steve Hitchins, an Islington PCT director, said salaries had been raised in line with national NHS figures.
“I don’t think we are comparing like with like. The Foundation Trust is a completely different ball game [to the PCT],” he said.
George Allen, an Islington governor, said: “Motivation isn’t only about money, it’s about the job. But the better the calibre of person we can recruit to it the better decisions will be made.”

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