Will Hutton has said it's become easier to recruit a Prime Minister than to find someone to run child protection services at Haringey Council.
Speaking after the launch of his independent review of public sector pay, the economist told the Breakfast programme on BBC One:
"There's no shortage of people coming forward to be Prime Minister...if you're trying to hire someone to do child protection services in Haringey, there's almost no one on earth who wanted to do it. You have to pay to get the talent, and if you want child protection done well, you've got to pay for the skilled people to do it."
Hutton's report contains proposals to ensure pay for senior managers of public services is controlled by "stronger governance of the pay-setting process and independent assessments of performance indicators".
He has also proposed widening the pool of candidates so that public service organisations recruit from the private sector, and from other areas of public service. This idea certainly has merit and could be successful at the most senior level of, say, a chief executive of a local authority, where someone who has run a university or private company may be transferred across.
But the jury is out on whether private sector bosses could be drafted into the more specialised area of social care, which requires an in-depth understanding of the needs of communities. Look at the example of Doncaster Council, which employed a former frozen food manager as its director of children's services, and the poor performance that resulted in the Yorkshire borough, and other councils may not wish to follow suit.
