27.01.14
HS2 salaries high ‘to attract world-class engineers’
The government has defended the high salaries for the top jobs at HS2, stating that the country needs to attract the best engineers to the project.
Chairman David Higgins, who will take up the role full-time from March, will be paid a salary of £591,000. New chief executive Simon Kirby, who will join HS2 in June, will be paid £750,000.
But the current chief executive Alison Munro is paid just £115,000. She will take up a new role as director of development for HS2 this summer.
Speaking on the BBC's Daily Politics programme, McLoughlin said these “are very big projects and we need to attract the best people we possibly can. So we are going for the best engineers in the world to engineer this project”.
He added: “It is a large salary but I am rather pleased that engineers, rather than bankers, can be seen to get big rewards for delivering what will be very important pieces of national infrastructure.”
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