The British Prime Minister’s Chief of Staff Keir Starmer She received a pay rise after the July 4 election and now earns more than her boss. The BBC has learned that Sue Gray successfully applied for an annual salary of £170,000 (€20,213), some £3,000 more than her boss. premier Labour and any of his predecessors in office. These were his conditions, and they were accepted.
Gray, who was previously head of London’s Metropolitan Police, earns more money, of course, than any member of the government. “It was suggested to her that she might want to be paid a few thousand pounds less than the Prime Minister to avoid this story. She refused,” a source quoted by the British police reveals.
The decision, as expected, has sparked a controversy within the Executive around the figure of Gray, whose report on the parties in Downing Street in the context of the pandemic, made public during his time as head of Scotland Yard, contributed to the fall from grace of Boris Johnson.
To put the figures into comparison, Liam Booth-Smithchief of staff to Conservative adviser Rishi Sunak, was paid £140,000-£145,000 a year, the top end of the highest pay band for special advisers, and Starmer earns £166,786 a year.
Gray’s pay rise comes after the prime minister approved a pay rise for special advisers shortly after taking office. The government maintains that the pay rise was made by civil servants, not Gray herself, and that her salary is not the highest of the new group of special advisers.
The news of her pay rise is also the latest in a series of leaks about her that paint a picture of fractious relations at the top of the government, just months into Labour’s term. “It speaks to the dysfunctional way 10 Downing Street is being run – no impeachment, with an increasingly grandiose Sue who sees herself as deputy prime minister, hence the pay, and no other voice for the prime minister to hear as everything goes through Sue,” the BBC reports from another of its sources.
One member of the government described Gray’s pay as “the highest in the history of special advisers.” Other members of the government defend Gray and say she is being targeted by a misguided and deeply personal campaign that is grossly unfair, according to local media. Gray’s pay has caused such controversy in the government in part because other advisers believe they are underpaid.
