AN MP has defended a £105,000 NHS pay packet for just four months’ work for an interim chief executive.

Conservative Sir Tony Baldry said the Oxfordshire Clinical Commissioning Group (OCCG) payment was “appropriate”.

Yesterday we reported how Mr Wilson was paid £105,000 to £110,000 – it would not reveal the exact amount – for December 10 to March 31.

He was brought in to turn around the troubled organisation, launched on April 1 as part of a national shake-up aimed at involving GPs more.

It decides where most NHS cash is spent and avoided a £6.9m deficit at the end of 2013/14 after hospital bosses agreed to write off some bills.

Sir Tony said: “Before Ian Wilson arrived, OCCG was heading for a significant deficit which would have been of no benefit to anyone locally.

“During the time he has been in post, he has managed to turn the OCCG around to end the year in a surplus and he has been paid appropriately for that task.”

Oxford East Labour Andrew Smith yesterday said the salary – equivalent to at least £1,363 a day – was to get OCCG out of the “financial mess” from a “wholly unnecessary reorganisation”.

Full-time chief executive David Smith will start on Monday on a pay scale of £120,000 to £150,000.

County Conservative MPs David Cameron, Ed Vaizey, Nicola Blackwood had yet to comment.

The OCCG yesterday said interim pay can be “significantly higher due to the difficult nature of the work”.

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