Many were surprised when David Cameron opted to appoint Will Hutton as chair of a new fair pay commission for public sector salaries.

The idea of appointing the left wing commentator to a key role in a Conservative-led administration was seen as incongruous.

Yet is there another difficulty down the line for any fair pay ratio that may be recommended by the Commission?

The Claim

In her column this morning, Polly Toynbee while favourable to the idea of the ratio argues that it will clash with the Tory and Lib Dem agenda for decentralisation.

She writes: “Is the hated top-down, central-diktat government to decree what people are paid locally? Conservatives and Lib Dems are all for localism and local pay rates. Yet the highest payers are the academies and foundation hospitals that float free of anyone's control, of which there will be many more. New localism, new fat cats?”

But to what extent would the cases she cite be affected by the pay ratio?

Analysis

Accessing accurate data on public sector pay is difficult as there is no standardised record of pay rates.

We turned to the Taxpayers Alliance (TPA) public sector rich list as the next best alternative, for a point of reference.

Using Ms Toynbee’s own estimate of the threshold of “around £200k”, we can assess how much effect there would be.

The list shows that while 24 employees of Foundation Trusts do earn over £200,000 there are also a further 38 employees of other NHS trusts earning over this level.

Matthew Sinclair, Research Director at the Taxpayers Alliance told us that while pay may be slightly higher in foundation trusts, they did not significantly stand out when compared to other highly paid staff in the health service.

“Foundation Trusts don’t particularly stand out in the Public Sector Rich List

“Foundation Trusts are not particularly the issue. It’s NHS trusts in general, many of them have very well paid staff," he said.

That academies would see their pay policy for headteachers significantly curbed by the cap also appears a difficult case to argue.

While headteachers were not included in the TPA rich list, Mr Sinclair told us that he felt that there would be few heads in academies or otherwise that would earn over £200,000.

In state schools head teachers pay is capped at £109,000 for 2009-10 – far less than the potential threshold of the ratio. Even though academies have far greater freedom over staff pay it seems that currently there are few if any heads at academies paid over £200,000.

Indeed figures for 2008-09 revealed this year by the Times show that while 11 heads received over £150,000, only two received over £190,000 and the top rate was £199,999. While it is likely that pay rates have gone up for the current academic year, it illustrates that relatively few would currently be affected – even if the ratio was enforced for academies.

The second problem in suggesting pay multiple restrictions may hit academies is that teaching staff are not paid minimum wage, and those on low pay working in schools, such as cleaners, would not be factored in if, as often happens, they were employed by private contractors.

This also goes for foundation trusts or indeed any public sector organisation where services such as cleaning are contracted out.

This could mean those on the lowest pay are not considered in the calculations, allowing for a higher upper limit to be set on pay, and therefore reducing potential impact on those on the highest salaries.

Conclusion

Polly Toynbee is right to highlight the inherent contradiction between a decentralisation agenda and centrally set pay limits. Yet it seems that NHS foundation trusts and academies will not be significantly or disproportionately affected.

As the figures show a ratio which enforced a pay cap of £200,000 would apply just as much to regular NHS trusts as foundation trusts, if not more so.

The most recent figures available also suggest that were a pay multiple policy introduced in academies it would have very limited effect on heads’ salaries.

As Matthew Sinclair told us: "Any policy which imposes limits from the centre is in conflict with localism but I don’t think it’s academies and foundation trusts in particular. You could easily apply the same thing to councils and other local services."

He added: "It’s a bit misleading. She seems to assume the Blairite reform institutions must be the issue and I don’t think there’s really much evidence for that.”