The Senior Salaries Review Body's remit now covers certain senior managers in the National Health Service, as well as leaders in the law, the armed forces and the Civil Service. The Body detects signs that the pay of these groups is falling increasingly behind that of comparable groups in the wider public and private sectors, and that is beginning to cause problems of recruitment, retention and morale. The increases proposed are moderate, but the report stresses that it would be against the public interest in the longer term if the quality or performance of the state's senior managers and judges were to deteriorate.

This is the 31st report on senior salaries (Cm. 7556, ISBN 9780101755627) and is presented by the Review Body on Senior Salaries established in 1993. The Review Body provides independent advice to the Prime Minister, the Lord Chancellor and the Secretaries of State for Defence and Health on the remuneration of holders of judicial office; senior civil servants; senior officers of the armed forces; senior managers in the NHS (chief executives, executive directors) and other equivalent public appointments. The publication is divided into 5 chapters, with 9 appendices. The chapters cover the following areas: Chapter 1: Introduction and economic evidence; Chapter 2: The senior civil service; Chapter 3: Senior officers in the armed forces; Chapter 4: The judiciary; Chapter 5: Very senior managers in the National Health Service. There are 19 recommedations set out over these 5 chapters, including: that senior civil service base pay be increased by 2.1%; that permanent secretaries' base pay be increased by 2.1%; that the MoD produce further evidence on the job evaluation exercise of the senior military, including 4-star officers; that administrations in England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland make collection of information in job weight a priority and continue work with the judiciary to collect meaningful data to show whether job weight at different levels is changing over time; that from 1 April 2009 the pay for Very Senior Managers in the NHS should increase by 2.4%. The publication sets out in various tables the recommended salaries for the above holders.

The total costs of central government staff grew by 10 per cent in real terms in the ten years to 2009-10, with current costs totalling £16.4 billion. Over the same period, staff numbers fell by 1 per cent, from 497,000 full time equivalents to 493,000. The growth in staff costs is largely the result of an unplanned increase in the number of staff in higher grades. Between March 2001 and March 2010, the number of administrative grade staff declined. But all higher grades grew in number, with Civil Service management grades 6 and 7 showing a 67 per cent increase (around 14,000 posts). This change in grade mix accounts directly for approximately 50 per cent of the staffing cost increase. Some 35 per cent of the real terms increase in staff costs is due to increases in salaries and performance-related pay. A range of immediate central actions in response to spending pressures has been announced, including freezes on pay and recruitment. But the longer term reductions in staff costs required by the 2010 Spending Review will be the responsibility of departments and agencies, and many do not have a comprehensive understanding of their own staff costs or skills in order to support this cost reduction activity adequately. The scale of staff cost reductions is unlikely to be achieved by natural turnover alone. Despite proposed changes to the Civil Service Compensation Scheme, the up-front costs of voluntary or compulsory redundancy schemes and early retirements will be significant.

A report that calls for a Top Pay Commission to 'name and shame' public sector organizations that pay excessive salaries to their top officials.

This is the thirty-fourth report on senior salaries with the remit of providing independent advice to the Prime Minister, the Lord Chancellor, the Secretary of State for Defence and the Secretary of State for Health on the remuneration of holders of judicial office; senior civil servants; senior officers of the armed forces; very senior managers in the NHS; and other such public appointments. However it covers the second year of the Government's pay freeze for public sector workers paid over £21,000 a year. Therefore, no recommendations for the relevant remit groups could be made. The Review Body report concentrates accordingly on any evidence about recruitment, retention or motiviation, and sets out its views on changes it would like to see in the pay and performance management systems for the remit groups, systems which are nearly all currently under review.