Remember Paul Gray? He’s the former head of Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, who resigned last month over the ‘discs lost in the post’ scandal (still very much unresolved, of course). Well, he’s back in a Government post, but his situation is a mysterious one. The mystery is this: why is he now working for nothing?
Channel 4 News have reported that he is ‘working for his old treasury boss, Sir Gus O’Donnell at the cabinet office - on projects to “develop Civil servants skills”‘ (that should probably be ‘civil servants’ skills’, but never mind). Apparently he is not being paid for this work - indeed, Government has boasted of the fact. BBC News this evening quotes a Cabinet Office spokesman:
A government spokesman said Mr Gray’s period of notice meant he would continue to be paid until 31 December whether he was working or not. ‘In the meantime he has agreed to a request from Cabinet Secretary Sir Gus O’Donnell to undertake a short piece of work on cross-government matters until Christmas,’ the Cabinet Office spokesman said. He added the period of notice meant ‘he could receive payment for no work or receive payment for doing some work. It was thought to be better in the public interest that he did some work. There is no additional cost to the public purse. He will leave the payroll on December 31.’
Paul Gray’s period of notice would be laid down in his contract, entitling him to be paid for a set period after leaving his post (depending on the circumstances). That isn’t ‘payment for no work’, that’s payment he’s entitled to for the work he was doing in his previous post. If neither the Cabinet Office nor HMRC understands that simple fact, no wonder we’ve got problems.
If Mr Gray is indeed now doing a short-term piece of work, he ought to be paid for it - and that pay has nothing to do with the provisions of the contract governing the job he has now left. It sounds as if the Government are depriving an employee of his rights in order to get what they hope will be the good publicity of saying that he isn’t costing taxpayers anything. And if Paul Gray has agreed to that, he’s surely ill-advised. Government is not a charity, and no-one should work for it for nothing.
It may not seem to matter very much in the case of a senior and well-paid official like Mr Gray, but the principle that if you work you should get paid for it applies to everyone and it’s very dangerous to chip away at that principle.
Yet another example of how clueless and confused the British Government is these days.
