The UK has one civil servant for every 116 residents but here in the island, with 2,500 civil servants for a population of 83,341, the ratio is one for every 33.

’We don’t have more teachers than the UK, police, fire or nurses. Why should we have more civil servants?’ asked LibVan Onchan MHK Julie Edge in Tynwald as she called for an independent review of civil service positions of executive officer and above.

Mrs Edge’s concerns relate to grade inflation at a senior level and the increase in jobs at management level leading to a top heavy structure, with the pay of certain posts being higher than the equivalent level in the UK.

She said: ’It is essential for this administration to look at this in full to ensure we are operating an efficient and effective public service and receiving value for money for the public purse.

Some 60 per cent of civil servants’ regrading requests in the last five years have been approved and not one downgraded. In the year before the election, there were 62 extra posts earning over £50,000. This, it was claimed, was due to incremental increases.

Mrs Edge said the independent review would look at the structure and size of the civil service, pay grades and contractual incremental progression, the early retirement scheme, impact on flexitime, off payroll rules, scrutiny of the grading process and whether all post responsibilities match their remuneration.

The funding of such a review would be ’an investment in the future generations of this island,’ she said.

But Policy and Reform Minister Chris Thomas said a full review conducted by an external company would cost ’hundreds of thousands of pounds’.

If a grading review was carried out of all of the 1,200 posts at executive officer level and above it would cost £750,000, he said, and a full review would be ’unsettling’ to a large part of the civil service.

Instead, CoMin supported a more affordable option of audits to test Mrs Edge’s claims, looking at a 25 per cent sample of regradings of executive officer and above over the last few years to establish if they have been done correctly and a 10 per cent sample of recruitment to those posts in the last 12 months.

Mr Thomas said: ’It must be done in an affordable away which doesn’t undermine morale.’

Ayre and Michael MHK Tim Baker queried what the scope of the review would be. ’We are in danger of writing a blank cheque,’ he said. He tabled an amendment calling for the terms of reference, time and proposed costs of the review to be approved before it begins.

The motion as amended was voted through unanimously.