Health chiefs' pay criticised

Figures provoke concern about effect on health services

The Northern Ireland Assembly's Public Accounts Committee (PAC) has criticised pay increases to health trust chief executives.

Committee chairman Billy Bell also hit out at termination settlements for executives and at the Department of Health for failing to exert more control over the issue.

However, the Institute of Healthcare Management, which represents about 350 managers, has defended the pay rises.

Head of management at the Royal group of hospitals and president of the Institute William McKee, said the increases were still less than those paid to other public sector workers in Northern Ireland.

Billy Bell: "Immense concern"

Mr McKee said executive pay in Northern Ireland was about 15% below that of staff in England.

He said: "I am concerned that this sustained and unwarranted criticism of senior executives in the health service is destroying morale.

"We don't want to get to a situation like that in England, where pay rates for this group of staff are higher than in Northern Ireland, but many posts are left unfilled because people will not take them up because of the criticism there is of these sorts of jobs."

However, Mr Bell said there was immense public concern about the amount of money being paid to senior health managers.

The PAC was appointed to consider accounts laid before the assembly and has the power to send for persons, papers and records.

Its fifth report, published on Wednesday, said while hospital budgets were under great pressure, executive pay increases and settlements had an adverse impact on public confidence in the effective use of resources in the health service.

We have serious criticisms of the extent to which the department seems to have operated at arm's length

Billy Bell

"Our concern about executive directors' and senior managers' remuneration goes beyond annual salary increases and includes the whole employment package," said Mr Bell.

"In our view, the data provided to the committee confirms that there was some justification for the public perception of senior management 'fat cats' benefiting disproportionately from the new trusts compared with other groups of workers in the front line of the health service."

The committee found that:

In the four-year period ending in March 2000, the chief executives of the Ulster Community and Hospitals Trust and North and West Belfast Trust received travel expenses and subsistence allowances of £37,400 and £34,383 respectively.

By contrast, three trust chief executives in the Western Board area were paid a total of £22,401, three in the Northern Board area a total of £3,146 and four in the Southern Board area a total of £3,249.

In relation to travel outside Northern Ireland, the chief executive of the North and West Belfast Trust made a total of 86 trips and the chief executive of Ulster Community and Hospitals Trust made a total of 73 trips in the four-year period up to March 2000

The committee's review identified nine termination settlements totalling over £1m.

The committee views the continued disregard of pay restraint by some of the trusts as indefensible and insensitive

Public Accounts Committee

It also found that the former chief executive of the Eastern Ambulance Trust received a large settlement before moving to a new job in the Surrey Ambulance Service a week later.

The PAC said while nothing illegal had taken place, the Department of Health "had been taken for a ride".

"However, we have serious criticisms of the extent to which the department seems to have operated at arm's length.

"The policy framework established by ministers should not have prevented it from being more proactive in giving guidance and exerting overall control."

Even when it was clear things were going wrong, the department did not intervene in a way in which it was effective, said the PAC.

"The committee views the continued disregard of pay restraint by some of the trusts as indefensible and insensitive," said Mr Bell.