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The Liberal Democrat leader has called for councils to cut top earners' wages by one-quarter. Nick Clegg used his party's annual conference to demand a 25% cut in local government salaries above £100,000 – or reduce the number of jobs at the top of the council. Mr Clegg said: ‘Local councils should slash the salaries of the very well-paid. We have allowed excessively-high salaries to let rip in the public and private sector over the last decade, while lots of people are struggling to make ends meet.' He also suggested merging the CLG with the Wales and Scotland Offices, creating a ‘Department for the Nations'. He claimed cutting the number of government departments from 24 to 12 could save £1.82bn. Mr Clegg said: ‘Central government in Whitehall is too big, too powerful and too expensive. We could save billions by scrapping entire government departments and culling quangos.' He also told party members he was opposed to Barnet LBC's plans to adopt a pricing model similar to that of low-cost airlines. The plan, dubbed ‘easyCouncil', to outsource service delivery and a radical reform of public provision is being touted as a blueprint for a Conservative Government. Mr Clegg dscribed the plan as misguided. ‘It's not a question of which council can flog off the services to the cheapest private sector provider,' he said. ‘If you are going to use the private sector, it has to be in competition. The wholesale transfer of a public sector monopoly to a private sector one – as happened with First Buses in my constituency – is the worst thing.' The party's treasury spokesman, Vince Cable, called for a British investment bank to provide cash for big public investment projects. He said: ‘We need a finance mechanism which can meet the investment needs of big projects.'

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WHITEHALL

Clegg calls for 25% cut in senior salaries

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