With most Ministers, MPs and journalists on holiday, as the Today programme pointed out this morning the journalists still at their desks have to work harder for their stories. This must make it tempting to carry a piece that is provided by an MP wanting to get their view across, even if the story itself is pretty thin. The front page article in todays Telegraph on the issue of Charity pay is a classic example, the paper has published a story from Priti Patel, a backbench Conservative MP which lacks context and perspective. Along with the Telegraph, last nights Newsnight and this mornings Today have given this more oxygen further exaggerating the weaknesses in the story. The article explores the pay of Chief Executives and senior staff of the 14 Overseas Aid Charities which form DEC. According to the headline there are  30 members of staff whose pay exceeds £100,000. In the story itself, more attention is paid to pay rises and it appears that in some cases these have been significant despite a fall to some incomes. What the article does not do is recognise that these charities are enormous organisations and if compared to businesses of a similar size, these pay levels would be seen as derisory. The paper focuses on 6 charities out of the 14 and of these three have an income between £200M and £385M. The other three are much smaller with an income range from £48M to £95M.

The argument is made that these charities are not accountable in the way that quangos and government departments are. Ms Patel is quoted as saying “As more public money is being given to charities to run services, they need to become more accountable to the public and subject to greater scrutiny and transparency.” This is palpable nonsense and it is unfortunate that Ms Patel is not better versed in the work of charities. Every charity is held accountable on behalf of us the community by their Trustees. A full list of these people can be accessed from the same place Ms Patel found the information which is the charity commission website, a great deal more accessible and accountable than in the case of most Government agencies. If anyone wants to challenge the pay levels in any of these charities, they can write to the Trustees, they will probably get a much better response than if any of us writes to the Government about the pay of its senior officers. I am not suggesting that there is no case to answer in the charitable sector or these 14 in particular but in the context of a charitable sector with 163,000 charities across the UK and nearly 2000 with an income of at least £5M, charities generally pay modest levels of remuneration. I would challenge anyone able to find many comparable commercial companies where executives are not being paid at least £100,000.

If you read the Telegraph piece you will spot that their focus is on the largest overseas aid charities. At a time when Foreign Aid is a hot topic, this is clearly politically motivated. Sadly this story will send a negative message about charities in general and overseas aid charities in particular to many people who simply read the story. The Telegraph turned to the Charity Commission for a statement and the response from William Shawcross who is  Chair of the Commission appears to have done little to bring in any balance. William Shawcross as I wrote previously is paid £50,000 for two days a week at the Commission (one of those quangos which Ms Patel is so proud of), so as a Chair he is paid the equivalent of £125,000 pa. If Ms Patel and the Telegraph are serious about challenging the way in which the charitable sector is organised they could focus on the many charities that are struggling to remain in business due to problems in funding the sector, or else turn to the very small number of charities whose very existence as charities is questionable and who remunerate employees and board member alike at levels that few of us could imagine. Take the Wellcome Trust whose Chairman (a role in most charities that is not remunerated at all) is paid £137,000 and many of the other board members are also paid substantial sums.  The Chief Executive is paid in excess of £600,00 and some of their other executives are similarly rewarded. This is where the real fat cats of the charitable world live. However perhaps Wellcome with at least one Government Peer on the board is the wrong sort of charity for Ms Patel to target? Alternatively she could have focused on the good work of the 14 charities she has been looking at, but that would not have got onto the front page, even at this time of year would it!