Scotland’s most senior prosecutor has said that her salary in “public service” is “probably” only a quarter of what she earned as a lawyer in private practice.
Dorothy Bain, the lord advocate, said she had been very fortunate to earn “significant sums of money”.
Bain, who took on the £127,000-a-year role of lord advocate in June, was speaking as the Scottish parliament’s criminal justice committee was told that the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service is recruiting new staff as it aims to reduce the vacancy rate within the organisation from 12.8 per cent to 0.2 per cent in just five months.
Bain offered a “contribution from the position of someone who practised at the bar”. She said: “I was very fortunate in my later years of practice to earn significant sums of money, which came from having committed myself to my job for a long, long time and I have to say many hours, and many unsociable hours, of hard, hard work.
“So for me, talking personally, probably my rate of coming into Crown Office as an advocate depute and then committing again to public service, my pay probably is a quarter of what I earned as an advocate in private practice.”
