What price a healthy NHS?

The Argus told how the highest earner at Sussex's cashstrapped hospitals raked in more than £340,000 in a year - enough to pay the wages of 15 nurses.

o are the inflated paypackets needed to get our NHS back on track or an insult to overworked nurses and pensioners spending months on waiting lists? Simon Barrett reports.

It is a bitter pill to swallow for campaigners fighting tooth and nail against cuts to hospital services in Sussex.

Maternity wards and A&E services could be closed if moneysaving proposals to reform the NHS are finally pushed through.

Thousands of people have written letters, marched and demonstrated in protest at the cuts.

But as the people revolt, health bosses who earn up to twice the Prime Minister's salary watch on from the ivory towers of the NHS.

Sussex health executives featured highly in a list of public sector "fat cats" released by campaign group The Taxpayers' Alliance last week.

Ian McNuff, who was employed as director of turnaround at Royal West Sussex NHS Trust, which runs St Richard's Hospital in Chichester, was the single highest earner, making £345,000 in the financial year 2006-07.

His wages were the second highest of any NHS employee in Britain. Mr McNuff earned more in a month than the £21,985 average annual starting salary paid to nurses.

He had been employed as an expert trouble-shooter to transform the trust's finances at a time when it was making substantial losses. He left his post at the end of January.

Six other NHS bosses in Sussex were paid more than £110,000 each in the same time period.

The Argus approached the South East Coast Strategic Health Authority and invited it to explain the reasoning behind such wage structures.

After spending an afternoon waiting for a response, we were handed the following statement: "Staffing is a matter for the trust and any issues regarding employees of Royal West Sussex NHS Trust should be taken up with the trust."

Critics argue that it is just this sort of pass-the-buck mentality that has left our once-great National Health Service in the state of disarray it finds itself.

While an ever increasing army of pen-pushers and number crunchers are handsomely rewarded, wards are overstretched and morale among frontline staff plummets to new lows.

Two senior staff from the Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals NHS Trust, which runs the Royal Sussex County Hospital in Brighton and Princess Royal Hospital in Haywards Heath, featured in the list.

They were medical director Matthew Fletcher on £170,000 and former chief executive Peter Coles on £160,000, amounts which union leaders labelled "reprehensible".

A spokeswoman for Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals Trust said: "The salaries for all our executive and divisional clinical directors are decided by the remuneration committee to ensure they are fairly rewarded for their individual contribution to the organisation, with due regard to market rates, affordability and equal value."

Meanwhile, scores of Sussex GPs are thought to be paid enough to feature in the roll, but the researchers only looked at those whose salaries are declared in published accounts.

It has also been revealed that 19 council officers in Sussex were taking home salaries of more than £100,000.

Sandy Bruce Lockhart, chairman of the Local Government Association, said: "These salaries did not pop out of the woodwork but have long been in the public domain.

"If these same people were employed in the private sector running companies with the same sort of budgets then their salaries would be far higher.

"Put simply, taxpayers should expect to have well managed organisations that deliver the right services, in the right time and at the right cost.

"If you paid peanuts you would get monkeys who would fail to deliver what people want, need and expect."

The Taxpayers' Alliance has called on the Government to restrict pay increases in the public sector.

Chief executive Matthew Elliott said: "Taxpayers have a right to know how much senior public sector officials are being paid, because only then can we judge whether they deserve their remuneration.

"Too often, public sector executives are rewarded handsomely even when they fail. At a time when the Government is rightly aiming to restrain public sector pay increases to two per cent, these top officials shouldn't be hiking their pay by six times as much."

Bosses from the South East England Development Agency (Seeda) were also revealed to be earning huge wages at the public's expense.

Pam Alexander, chief executive of the unelected quango responsible for economic development, earned £192,801, while director of resources Duncan Straughen pocketed £153,994.

Taxpayers will be further exasperated to learn that under Gordon Brown the list of quangos is likely to grow further.

In the Queen's Speech earlier this month he announced that seven more publicly funded bodies would be created in the new parliamentary session. They include a committee on climate change to advise on carbon emission targets.

The number of quangos has ballooned since Labour came to power, despite a pledge from Tony Blair in 1996 to consign them to the "dustbin of history".

Their total cost has increased by 60 per cent since 2003. There are now almost 900 quangos and agencies, with 30,000 members, costing taxpayers at least £340 million every day.

Norman Baker, MP for Lewes, said: "The important issue here is not the wages, it is public accountability.

"When people are not directly elected they are not accountable to taxpayers, and their wages and expenses tend to rise.

"It is clear that an individual is worth a large wage if they are playing a key role in the NHS or a successful council.

"However, people have a right to be angry when services are being cut and so drawing that wage becomes difficult to justify."

What do you think? Have your say below