Top aide Sue Gray reportedly paid more than Prime Minister

Sir Keir Starmer’s top aide reportedly got a pay rise after the general election that put her earnings above the Prime Minister’s.

Chief of staff Sue Gray asked for and was given a salary of £170,000, according to the BBC. This means her earnings are some £3,000 more than those of Sir Keir, who is paid around £167,000 from his MP and Prime Minister’s salaries.

The BBC said a number of Whitehall sources had briefed the organisation on Ms Gray’s salary increase.

Ms Gray, the former Whitehall ethics chief who conducted the partygate investigation and was then drafted into Sir Keir’s team before the election, has recently been the subject of a stream of negative stories.

Special adviser salaries and pay bands are outlined in an annual report.

Rebanding

Sir Keir signed off a rebanding of the salaries for special advisers shortly after taking office in July, according to the BBC.

This is not reflected in the most recent publicly available report, which is from July 2023.

That report puts the top salary for the top band at £145,000 and shows that Ms Gray’s predecessor in Rishi Sunak’s government, Liam Booth Smith, was paid between £140,000 and £144,999.

The ceiling for special adviser pay has not been increased since 2019, since which time there has been a 24.5% rise in inflation.

A Cabinet Office spokesperson said: “It is false to suggest that political appointees have made any decisions on their own pay bands or determining their own pay.

“Any decision on special adviser pay is made by officials, not political appointees.

“As set out publicly, special advisers cannot authorise expenditure of public funds or have responsibility for budgets.”

The Conservative Party responded with a series of questions for Labour, including whether the Prime Minister personally signed off on Sue Gray’s new salary and the increase to the cap on the highest pay band.

They also asked whether a special adviser remuneration committee still exists and if Ms Gray is a member as well as what role she played in setting her own salary and changing pay bands.

‘Nest of vipers’

Downing Street denied this week that there was a “nest of vipers” behind the scenes in Sir Keir’s administration following reports of tensions involving senior officials.

Recent stories have alleged difficult relations between Sir Keir’s closest aides Ms Gray and director of political strategy, Morgan McSweeney, and suggestions of tensions between the chief of staff and special advisers.

Over the weekend, Sir Keir sought to play down the rumours about Ms Gray, saying: “I’m not going to talk behind her back and I’m not going to talk about individual members of staff, whether it’s Sue Gray or any other member of staff.”

“All I can say about the stories is most of them are wildly wrong.”

A Downing Street spokeswoman said Sir Keir was satisfied that Cabinet Secretary Simon Case was not behind the leaks.