We should remind ourselves of the reasons the benchmarking body was established in the first instance. When we came to review the Programme for Prosperity and Fairness two and a half years ago, we discovered several problems within the public service. There were and still are huge numbers of badly paid public servants at the lower grades, while qualified professional civil servants working in planning and architecture and senior civil servants in Departments proper were being lost to the private sector where they could earn a great deal more. No responsible Government could have ignored those twin problems.