The news will shock Britain’s French and German allies who are trying to stop the US setting up another ABM site in Alaska which would also receive early warnings of launches from Menwith Hill.The ABM treaty restricts Russia and the US to one ABM site apiece. Russia has 100 anti-ballistic missiles deployed around Moscow; US missiles are concentrated at a large silo in North Dakota.America’s European allies believe the project, which is due to be agreed by President Clinton next summer, will “lead to a split in security standards”, according to Joschka Fischer, Germany’s foreign minister.Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean, Foreign Office minister, said the Government had granted the US permission to develop SBIRS at Menwith Hill in March 1997 after a series of consultations.Since then the Ministry of Defence has used its government immunity to grant planning permission for up to four new radomes (golf-ball-shaped satellite ground stations).Baroness Dean maintained that the British government retained legal possession and control over Menwith Hill, but analysts such as Simon Davies of Privacy International believe that control is nominal.Norman Baker, the Liberal Democrat MP for Lewes, recently proved that the Americans were effectively “squatting” at the base. The US government’s lease on Menwith Hill expired in May 1997 and has not been renewed.Mr Baker, who has doggedly tried to unlock the secrets of Menwith Hill, said: “I believe what is happening is contrary to international agreements and against the national interest of this country. The Government should come clean about Menwith Hill and should be putting British interests first. Every time you lift a Menwith Hill stone something nasty crawls out.”Menwith Hill is better known for housing the Echelon eavesdropping system which enables the National Security Agency to listen in on two million telephone, e-mail and fax operation conversations an hour.

Many European countries suspect that the base is used for industrial espionage, an allegation denied by NSA.Opened in the late 1950s on land purchased by the Crown, it was taken over directly by the NSA in 1966 and became its Field Station F83 It is now the NSA’s largest listening post in the world. Sprawling across 560 acres, it has a 24-hour operation centre and on-site town.There are now 25 radomes, not including the three under construction, and the size of the staff has grown from 400 in 1980 to 1,770, of which 1,400 are American – a staff as large as MI5.A Ministry of Defence spokesman said: “The Government is fully aware of what is going on at Menwith Hill and is an equal partner in the development of the equipment.”COMMENT, PAGE 28. THE HIGHEST-PAID directors of some of the UK’s leading companies receive more than 200 times the average earnings of their workers, according to a new study. The research into the “fat cats” whose pay packets underline the growing gap between rich and poor in Britain is not the work of some radical think- tank but a group of accountants based at the University of Essex – the Association for Accountancy and Business Affairs. Its league table of 1,200 quoted companies shows that some of the lowest-paid employees work for the best remunerated bosses. Many of the firms have large numbers of part-time workers.
Among the study’s “top ten” is Jim Hodkinson, chief executive of the New Look fashion chain, who received just over pounds 1m from his company in 1998-99. Its average employee received pounds 6,400 – one-156th of what Mr Hodkinson got.

Earlier this year it emerged that Mr Hodkinson was also receiving a pension of pounds 182,000 from his former employer, Kingfisher, and had received a Mercedes worth pounds 35,000 as part of his termination package.In September, The Independent on Sunday interviewed “Mina”, a homeworker in Leicester who was sewing labels on to New Look tops. Mina was proud that even at 2p per label she was fast enough to make the pounds 3.60 per hour minimum wage. Mina did not deal with New Look directly, but with a middle- man.”I have been working for the last 10 years on the same rate. I used to get 2p for sewing on a button, but now that has been cut to 1.1p,” she said. “They are reducing the piecework rates to match the new legal minimum.”Kingfisher’s chief executive, Sir Geoff Mulcahy, also did well last year. He earned pounds 2,062,000 while his average worker earned pounds 7,600. His pay amounted to 268 times theirs.Other companies whose “fat cat” directors earned vast sums in comparison with their employees included the EMI Group, where the then president of EMI Music, Jim Fifield, earned pounds 6,728,000.

The average employee of EMI group earned pounds 32,570, making the US-based Mr Fifield’s pay 206 times theirs.Firms whose employees were mainly based in developing countries had particularly large gaps between the average and highest pay.At Lonmin, the platinum and coal mining division of the old Lonhro group, the chief executive Nick Morrell was paid pounds 630,000, while his average worker earned pounds 3,120. Most of the firm’s employees are miners in Southern Africa.Prem Sikka, professor of accounting at the University of Essex and one of the report’s three authors, said the study showed how the rich were getting richer and the poor poorer.”The Government has no policy to ensure that the employees who generate wealth actually get an equitable share of that wealth, he said. “The question is: `How are they going to tackle this?’”A spokeswoman for the Confederation of British Industry said all directors and employees should be paid on the basis of merit. “We believe pay should reflect performance, from the shop floor to the boardroom,” she said.EMI said Mr Fifield, who had now left the company, was paid to reflect the fact that he was based in the US.

“We operate an entertainment company and the salaries of these kinds of executives reflect what these people earn in the US,” he said. “It was significantly higher than the then Chairman Sir Colin Southgate.”Bass, whose Chairman Sir Ian Prosser received pounds 1.6m compared with an average of pounds 9,700, said his basic pay of pounds 914,000 was supplemented by a long-term incentive payment of pounds 717,000.At Lonmin, Nick Morrell’s salary of pounds 450,000 was supplemented by bonuses. David Gruber, chief executive of the MEPC property company, received a salary of just pounds 208,000 but had total pay of more than pounds 5m because of incentive payments and the sale of a US-based business.Bosses who soar in the income stratosphereSIR CLIVE THOMPSONChief executive of Rentokil InitialSir Clive, who is president of the CBI, is known as “Mr 20 per cent” because of a promise that his profits would grow by a fifth each year. He is also famed for his sense of humour: while sitting next to the Prime Minister at the CBI’s annual dinner, he referred to dealing with union recognition as “pest control”.SIR GEOFF MULCAHYChief executive of Kingfisher plcSIR Geoff loves sailing, and one of his two yachts recently came third in the Swan World Championships at the luxurious Porto Cervo in Sardinia, where it is “a lot easier to buy a fur coat than a pint of milk”, according to one regular. His winnings included a Rolex watch.NICK MORRELLChief executive of LonminAfter years in newspapers, latterly as commercial director of the Observer, the 52-year-old Mr Morrell knows the power of publicity And he hates it Thus, little is known about his personal life. He collaborated with Tiny Rowland on the famous mid-week Observer which attacked Mohamed Al Fayed. “He showed guts – I liked him,” Mr Rowland said later.JIM FIFIELDFormer president and chief executive officer of EMI MusicWhen Mr Fifield fell out with EMI in March 1998, he walked away with a “golden parachute” of around pounds 12m.