In the papers today, articles implying the NHS crisis is down to “fat cats”: managers of quangos and suchlike. In fact the cost of these managers is tiny relative to the scale of the problem.
The papers
These from the Telegraph and The Sun are typical.
These are disingenuous and designed to distract from the true cause of the NHS’s problems which is chronic underfunding in the guise of austerity.
Sum total
Lets try and get some perspective on the problem posed by these “fat cats”.
“One of the highest paid” is Dr Jonathan Fielden on £225K a year. There are 92 others paid over £150K a year. Most will be towards the bottom of the range – that’s how income distribution works – so let’s assume the average is £170K. The total for all 93 of them is therefore £15.8M.
We’re also told there are 628 (in total, so 535 we haven’t already counted) on more than £100K but less that £150K. Again typical distribution means that most will be at the bottom of the range, let’s say £115K. The total for all 535 of them is therefore £61.5M.
The total salaries of all these cats is around £77M. Actually it would be a bit more than this because the cost of employment is rather higher than gross salary which is what the reports are quoting. We’ll round it up to £100M.
Some perspective
According to earlier reports the NHS needs to make £22B in savings by 2020.
Even if 628 managers could be instantly sacked with no adverse effect (and they couldn’t), the saving would be £100M. That’s only 5% and is the absolute maximum, even if the fat cats were replaced by real, actual cats.
This is not to say it’s good, but how wrong is it? How much should large organisations spend on top-level management? I don’t know but in the end this supposed outrage is a drop in the ocean.
Why the outrage?
Despite what the Telegraph and the Daily Mail would like to say, the NHS crisis is down to Tory ideology not bogeymen “fat cats”.
This is another attempt to create the illusion that there is a simple problem that Jeremy Hunt can fix to save the NHS other than Jeremy Hunt himself. Anonymous fat cats are, like tax avoiders and the EU, an evil that the Daily Mail brigade can rage against without fear of dissent in the ranks whilst their friends in high places get on with doing real damage.
Inopportune thoughts 