35 HS2 bosses earn more than Prime Minister David Cameron

The roster includes a director of land and property, a director of health and safety, a director of risk and assurance – each of whom is paid £150,000 a year or more, while the Prime Minister is on £142,500.

It comes after official Whitehall figures showed the number of civil servants who are paid more than Mr Cameron has jumped by a third in just less than three years.

Simon Kirby, HS2 Ltd's chief executive, is paid up to £754,999 a year, while managing director Jim Crawford gets £394,999 a year.

Alistair Kirk, HS2's Programme & Strategy Director, is paid £304,999 a year and and Sir David Higgins, the group's chairman, earns £242,400.

We already knew that chief executive Simon Kirby is the country's highest paid public servant on £750,000 a year.

Now it emerges there are 35 bosses working on the project, each of whom is earning £150,000 a year or more. Three of them rake in more than £300,000.

The roles include a director of land and property and a director of risk and assurance - both vitally important to the scheme, I'm sure.

It is a startling fact that these fat cats are earning more money that the Prime Minister, for working on a project that is largely unwanted.

Mr Cameron, love him or loathe him, is paid £142,000 a year to run the country. He spends his days making decisions that affect every aspect of our lives.

With that in mind it would be interesting to take a peek at the daily routine of the HS2 director of health and safety. Is the role so demanding and involved that it deserves to be paid more money than the Prime Minister?

I very much doubt it. Funding for the HS2 rail line has soared to £55bn, with campaigners accusing the Government of losing control of the project's spiralling costs.

Last month its construction was brought forward by six years in a barely disguised ploy to prevent costs increasing further.

As yet not a single track has been laid, and no start date for work has been confirmed. It has taken years for the precise route to be revealed.

We are left in a position where the public is funding millions of pounds in civil servants wages, without really knowing what they are doing with their time.

We live in a time of grave threats to our security, yet the British Army has seen huge cuts to its budget. The NHS is at breaking point.

Police stations are closing down all over the country and the number of bobbies on the beat is at an all time low.

Yet we are committed to ploughing cash into a rail track the country can ill afford. There are numerous better uses of public money than feathering the nests of HS2 staff.

And only 96 people - 15 per cent of HS2 Ltd staff - are based in Birmingham. This is despite the fact HS2 Ltd signed a deal for 100,000sqft of office space in the city in July last year.

The figures have been branded a 'disgrace' by campaigners fighting the rail project, just weeks after the cost rocketed to £55 billion from £50.1bn.

Opponents in Staffordshire are fighting the route from London to Birmingham, which will tear through miles of the county's countryside.

"It seems that George Osborne forgot to send the memo about austerity to HS2 Ltd, as the quangos bosses continue to run their own gravy train. There are an ever increasing number of snouts in an ever expanding tax-payer funded trough, as the only thing anyone at HS2 Ltd seems to know how to do is to chuck money at this financial black hole. The chief executive's £750,000 salary is about 28 times that of the average wage in the UK."

"It is clear these are grotesque salaries and a real kick in the teeth to all those whose jobs and services are under threat from cuts, which will intensify after the Autumn Statement. HS2 Ltd are simply out of control, burning money which everyone else is being told isn't there. This gross injustice must stop, and HS2 must be cancelled."

Penny Gaines chairman of Stop HS2 added: "At a time when other services are being drastically reduced and support for the poorest is being cut, it is shocking to see the number of people at HS2 Ltd on this level of salary. HS2 will not just be a fast train for fat cats when it opens, it's also proving to be a fast buck for fat cats even before it gets parliamentary approval."

HS2 Ltd spokesman Ben Ruse said: "In order to deliver a project of this scale and complexity, on time and on budget, we need to recruit the most capable team possible and the best expertise from around the world."