BOSSES at cash-strapped Taunton’s Musgrove Park Hospital have admitted that news its 33 top earners are on a combined £5million a year will raise a few eyebrows.

Figures released this week by The TaxPayers’ Alliance reveal 32 consultants and one director at the Taunton and Somerset NHS Trust, which runs Musgrove, are on £150,001 each.

A source at Musgrove, which recently announced it is likely to overshoot its budget by £8.3million this year, said the trust follows nationally recommended salary rates.

The Taxpayers’ Alliance also claimed the chief executive and a medical director at Somerset Partnership NHS Trust were respectively paid £161,261 and £170,335, although those figures are disputed and a trust representative said the CEO is among the lowest paid nationwide.

An alliance spokesman said everybody supports doctors and nurses being paid well for doing “good, difficult jobs”, but warned against hospital management “picking up handsome pay deals at taxpayers’ expense”.

He pointed to a National Audit Office finding that most of the increased funding for the NHS has gone on “higher staff pay and increases in headcount”, while productivity has dropped.

A Musgrove spokeswoman said: “We recognise that in the difficult financial circumstances we are experiencing it could be surprising to hear that the hospital pays some of its doctors’ salaries at this level.

“Musgrove follows the agreed pay scales for doctors determined by the national terms and conditions set out in the 2003 Consultant Contract, and modified by any Department of Health responses to recommendations from the independent Doctors’ and Dentists’ Review Body.

“We are fortunate that we continue to attract the highest quality doctors to treat and care for the people of Somerset without the need to pay them above nationally set levels.”

Somerset Partnership NHS Foundation chairman Stephen Ladyman said chief executive Edward Colgan and medical director Andrew Dayani were paid £135,000 last year.

He added: “In line with all NHS trusts, the chief executive and trust executive directors do not determine their own pay.

“The salaries and remuneration of trust executive directors are determined by a Trust Remuneration Committee.

“A recent independent market assessment showed that the executive salaries paid at Somerset Partnership are at the lower end compared with NHS colleagues.

“The assessment also found that our trust’s chief executive’s salary is among the lowest paid chief executives in NHS Foundation Trusts.”

He said the trust, which employs more than 4,000 staff, providing more than 75 services on an annual turnover of £161million, “consistently meets demanding national and local health targets”, largely thanks to the “vision and leadership of Edward and Andrew”.

“Their salaries do represent value for money for what are very demanding jobs,” said Mr Ladyman.

The British Medical Association declined to comment.