It looks like trimming the fat isn’t going too well at the civil service, despite the government’s middling efforts.

Between 2016 and 2018 the government capped pay rises for mandarins – and froze salaries entirely in 2021 to bring down the costs of the bloated public sector. New analysis from the TaxPayers’ Alliance though shows that this hasn’t been entirely successful. In fact, the number of civil servants earning more than £100,000 has increased by 88 per cent since 2016. Now 2,050 officials earn more than £100k, up from 1,090 seven years ago. There are now also 195 mandarins earning more than £150,000.

Readers may be wondering how it is that salaries have managed to rise so significantly, given the wage freezes in place. According to the TPA this is because salary freezes are tied to civil service grade levels. So officials have been able to get round them by increasing the number of people promoted to higher ranks. At the same time, the total Whitehall headcount has increased by 100,000 since 2016 – the largest growth in 50 years. Trebles all round! None of this stopped members of the Public and Commercial Services (PCS) union going on strike this year – and calling for a 10 per cent pay rise to meet the increased cost of living. There can never be too many seats on the gravy train, after all.

You would hope, of course, that taxpayers would at least be getting bang for their buck when it comes to the top officials running the country. Unfortunately a quick glance of the most well-remunerated civil servants suggests this might not exactly be the case. According to the figures, the most generously paid civil servant in Britain in September 2022 on £640,000 was Mark Thurston, the CEO of HS2 who stepped down in July this year. The same HS2 which the Infrastructure and Projects Authority said at the end of last month was ‘undeliverable’ because of: ‘major issues with project definition, schedule, budget, quality and/or benefits delivery, which at this stage do not appear to be manageable or resolvable.’

Talk about getting your money’s worth!