Interview with Will Hutton: Fair pay

What ‘fair pay’ for leaders means Based on due desert, it involves some pay being ‘at risk’, as well as enhanced earnings potential A  good place to start is with what fair pay in the public sector doesn’t mean. Will Hutton, economist and commentator, known for his column in The Observer and his leadership of the Work Foundation, received a call from the prime minister’s office a day after the coalition government was formed last June, asking him to investigate specifically, “the idea of capping senior executive public sector pay at 20 times the lowest paid person in any public body”, and to examine “to what extent such a multiple could become a wider social norm”. In his report, he kicks that idea firmly into touch, pointing out that only 70 people in a public-sector workforce of 6 million would be affected. As he also shoots down the suggestion, from some more rabid pundits, that no one in the public sector should earn more than the prime minister (currently £142,500).