Just looked it up and yes Cabinet Minister's pay is in the same region as the Prime Minister's pay so for anybody to suggest one man is 100% responsible and the rest can act like chimps and shift responisibility is frankly bonkers.
Of course they all work within an agreed framework, usually an agreement set up when a party takes office of what basic policies are but that doesnt mean they'll all share the same opinion on how to achieve the Government's basic aims. In my view the most important person in Government is the Chancellor, the PM doesnt do the budget, the Chancellor does and its the Chancellor who decides where your money goes. Plenty of people (on here included) have strong criticisms of Gordon Brown's time as Chancellor, are you telling me that was all Blair's fault instead and Brown should in fact be completely absolved of responsibility for his 10 years in charge of the nations bank account?
Im not saying Brown opposed the scrappage scheme as i doubt he did but my point was he was not in charge of such policy. The scrappage scheme was announced by Alistair Darling in the 2009 budget and Darling (and Prescott before him) have pretty poor records as Transport Secretary.
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