> £100k/year = bad, £120k/year
Just keep in mind that if you pay someone a salary of £100k, your expense for that employee is actually much higher. So £120k would be less expensive and you also don’t take on thr risk and cost of developing a system (you’re getting “off the shelf”).
Hopefully it goes without saying but the person you're responding to was just giving an example. The contractor vs. permanent employee pay gap absurdity they're highlighting in government contracting is often much more profound than 20%. 100% higher pay for contractors doing the equivalent work in the US isn't uncommon.
You can also (generally) turn off the taps of the cost of the £120k/year incredibly quickly.
By comparison it is much harder (and also much more likely to generate negative newspaper headlines) to make 500 people redundant.