Pay for state firms ‘broken’ says £1.5m-a-year post boss

Chief executive Moya Greene, who received almost £1.5m in pay and benefits in the last financial year, said she had been “deeply offended” by criticism of her pay and benefits.

In an email to a member of the public who voiced concern about a £250,000 housing allowance she was offered – and subsequently paid back – Ms Greene said she was unimpressed with the amount of time it had taken ministers and civil servants to settle her pay after she moved from her native Canada to take up the job in 2010.

“I took on a company in grave difficulty,” she wrote. “I was here for a full 15 months before officials and/or ministers deigned to explain the exact basis upon which I would be paid. I had long resigned my previous position.”

The practice for setting compensation arrangements for chief executives in commercial companies involving Government shareholding was “hopelessly broken here”, said the email, which was passed to The Guardian newspaper.

Ms Greene said the climate for executives and their ability to manage in the UK remained “highly politicised”, aggravated by a press whose general traits have been “well set out” by Mr Justice Leveson.

She defended her record, saying Royal Mail was stable, offering 150,000 people good jobs with salaries and benefits “far superior” to elsewhere in the industry.

The Communication Workers Union (CWU) said earlier this month that postal workers would be “appalled” at the “excessive, inflation-busting increase” in bonuses for Ms Greene.

“It appears the company is adopting early the private sector penchant for higher prices and massive executive pay and bonuses,” said deputy general secretary Dave Ward.

The union is threatening to hold a strike ballot in the coming weeks unless a deal can be reached on pay, jobs, pensions and other issues linked to the Government’s controversial plans to privatise the Royal Mail.