DVLA’s lower pay nets the Treasury a £17m saving, claims union

Feb 28 2008 by Tomos Livingstone, Western Mail

THE Treasury is saving £17m a year by paying some Welsh civil servants less than their English counterparts, a union claims today.

The Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS) has uncovered a disparity in pay levels at the DVLA – whose head office is in Swansea – and staff on the same pay grades working elsewhere in the Department for Transport (DfT).

The PCS said the discrepancy showed the Government was introducing regionalised pay through the back door.

More than 3,000 Welsh civil servants at the DVLA, the Driving Standards Agency and the Vehicle and Operator Services Agency are due to strike tomorrow in a separate dispute over a below-inflation pay offer.

The issue of “regionalised” pay is highly contentious, with critics saying it merely cements wealth gaps between poorer areas and richer ones.

There are already plans to introduce regional pay differences for staff working in the Court Service, a move which has prompted a storm of protest from MPs.

The PCS asked the DVLA and the Department for Transport for details of pay grades for ‘core’ DfT work and for the DLVA, as well as figures on how many people were on each grade.

For instance, 2,331 DVLA workers – the vast majority in Wales – were on “pay grade 2”, being paid a minimum of £15,725, compared to £18,050 for other DfT workers. The total saving to the Exchequer exceeds £17m, and the figures exclude the London weighting paid to staff based in Whitehall.

Sian Wiblin, the PCS’s negotiations officer, said, “The situation of DVLA staff highlights the madness of civil service pay arrangements, which fail to provide adequate rewards to thousands of hard-working public servants.

“The end of national pay bargaining, more than 12 years ago, means that each government department carries out its own pay negotiations and workers doing similar work – sometimes even in the same building – can be on vastly different wages.

“In the Department for Transport, there are different pay scales even for the individual agencies. As the biggest agency – DVLA – is based largely in Wales, management have effectively introduced a covert policy of regional pay, exploiting lower market rates to pay Welsh workers less than their English counterparts.”

The DVLA employs 6,500 staff, the majority of whom work at the Swansea site. The agency has previously been criticised by auditors and MPs for the high levels of sickness absence at the centre. Tomorrow’s strike will see disruption to driving tests, and the PCS say the half-yearly introduction of new number plates will also be affected by the stoppage.

The union says it has an “obviously just cause”. But the Government is likely to resist calls for higher pay, having faced down similar demands from the police and, in England, nurses.

Elfyn Llwyd, Plaid Cymru’s leader in Westminster, is due to raise the issue of regional pay during the annual St David’s Day debate in the Commons this afternoon. He said, “Gordon Brown’s plan is to bring in regional pay everywhere. If you look at the plans for the court service, the lower-paid areas mirror the Objective One areas.

“It’s going to undermine efforts to improve economic growth, and would be terrible for Wales as we are more dependent on public sector jobs.”

A DfT spokeswoman said, “We are disappointed that PCS has chosen to take strike action, especially as less than 18% of their membership voted for this course of action. We will be working to minimise any disruption to the public.

“Pay decisions are taken by each agency and the central department in line with the public sector pay policy. ”