The list, which was released on the Cabinet Office’s website on Monday, reveals disparities in pay between different civil service roles: the head of IT at the Department of Work and Pensions, for example, earns £245,000-249,999, while Jonathan Stephens, permanent secretary at the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, earns £90,000 less.

In total, the record shows that 24 senior civil servants earn more than £200,000 per year. The highest paid is John Fingleton, chief executive of the Office of Fair Trading (pictured), whose salary is more than £275,000 – nearly double that of David Cameron. Put together, the 172 senior civil servants earn £29.2m per year.

Publication of the list came as the government announced it will be creating a new Public Sector Transparency Board to help drive the coalition’s cross-government openness agenda. Headed by Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude, the panel will be charged with “setting open data standards across the public sector and developing the legal right to data” in a bid to bring about a “radical shake-up of government transparency”. This will involve overseeing in September the disclosure of the names, grades, job titles and annual pay rates of all civil servants earning in excess of £58,000.

“We are pulling back the curtains to let light into the corridors of power,” said Maude. “Openness will not be comfortable for us in government; but it will enable the public to hold our feet to the fire.”

Speaking on Radio 4’s Today Programme yesterday morning, Jonathan Baume, general secretary of union the FDA, said he was in favour of benchmarks to create more uniformity in pay for civil servants, but argued that it is also important that the government review “the principles and criteria that set public sector pay”.

“If we’re going to have transparency, let’s have fair principles that set this level of pay and take it out of public argument so that people can feel confident [in the system]”, he said. “I think most people in this country are very fair, but they want to know why a chief executive in a local authority or a permanent secretary is paid a particular salary, and if we can understand the underlying principles, I think we can take some of the heat out of this argument.”

His sentiments are echoed by Raj Tulsiani, head of executive resourcing agency Green Park, who told CSW: “It doesn’t matter what they’re paid if they’re creating value for the public. What we really need is evidence of outcomes. If the public understands what civil servants are doing and how effective they are, then the issue of salary becomes a moot point.”