Call for top Guernsey States salaries to be disclosed

The top Guernsey States employees pay and benefits should be made public, the chief minister has said.

Current policy means the pay of individual public sector workers and civil servants stays confidential.

Deputy Lyndon Trott has called for a reform of government, and transparency of top salary awards.

He said: "There are some salary and benefits packages paid for by the taxpayer that are genuinely jaw dropping."

Deputy Trott said: "They need to be understood against the benefits that are available in the private sector, that in my view is justification for disclosure, not justification for concealment."

His comments followed a move by UK Prime Minister David Cameron to disclose the salaries and names of civil servants earning more than £150,000 a year.

The States of Jersey has also decided to release the details of its highest earning employees and Deputy Trott said Guernsey should follow suit.

He said: "I think the top earners, the top public sector employees, people paid by tax-payers should expect to have the pay and conditions associated with their roles made public to the people who employ them.

"I think one of the problems is when a system restricts the amount of accessibility to information people speculate and I am aware that there are many in the community that speculate some of our highest paid public servants are not worthy of the salary and benefits package they receive.

"The overwhelming majority of senior public sector workers do entirely justify the remuneration package that they receive, there are however some examples where that may not be the case."

The island's government employs about 5,500 people, of which about 1,800 are civil servants, 314 of those were in the 2009 top grade with a maximum wage of £130,940.

The amount of general revenue, money raised from taxation, spent on States employees wages in 2009 was £177m.