Jonathan Reynolds rejects claim Sue Gray showed ‘stunning arrogance’ accepting higher salary than Keir StarmerGood morning. Yesterday the BBC broke the story that Sue Gray, Keir Starmer’s chief of staff, is paid £170,000 a year, which is about £3,000 a year more than the PM himself. It is not a typical BBC story (more on that later), and it would be a classic prosecution exhibit for anyone arguing that political journalists are too obsessed with insider processology. There is also a strong argument that ministers and officials at the very top of politics are paid relatively little anyway if you take into account the skill set required, the hours worked, and what they might earn in the private sector.
Yes, as Chris Mason, the BBC’s political editor has argued in a blog about the story, this is more than just a slice of Whitehall trivia. That is because the story suggests serious feuding is happening within the Labour adviser machine in government. A story like this would not have ended up on the BBC without someone quite important briefing viciously against Gray, and the revelation has angered other special advisers who claim that Gray is to blame for them being offered measly salaries, at least compared to what their Tory predecessors were on, or what they were earning when they were paid by the Labour party.
So what, you might think. A few dozen special advisers most people have never heard of want to be paid more. Don’t we all? That might end up as being the appropriate response to the story. But if this row means No 10 can’t function properly because the PM’s most senior political adviser is too divisive, it will matter.
Jonathan Reynolds, the business secretary, has been doing a media round this morning, and, in an interview with Kay Burley on Sky News, he rejected her suggestion that Gray’s decision to accept more pay than the PM demonstrated her “stunning arrogance”. When this was put to him, Reynolds replied:
Clearly this an important job.
There’s a process that sets these paybands. It will reflect previous experience … It is a long-established way of establishing within certain pay bands renumeration relating to the job that you do. That’s what have been followed in this case.
The original BBC story included a quote from a source saying it was put to Gray that she might want to accept a small cut so she earned less than the PM, and that she declined. Government sources are saying that is “categorically untrue”.
Reynolds also suggested Starmer himself did not decide Gray’s pay. He said:
I think it’s important people understand that the pay bands for any official, any adviser, are not set by politicians. There’s an official process that does that. I don’t, for instance, get to set the pay for my own advisers who work directly for me. So, there’s a process, we don’t have political input into that.
The decision to increase the top salary available to special advisers in No 10, compared to what it was before the election, was taken by a committee of officials. But, according to the BBC story, Starmer signed off its decision.
When it was put to Reynolds that this was hypocritical given the fact that Starmer criticised Dominic Cummings getting a big pay rise when he was Boris Johnson’s chief adviser, Reynolds ignored this point and just replied:
There’s a process that sets these things. It is widely recognised. It’s long-standing. It hasn’t changed and that is how pay bands are set for any adviser.
There will be more on this as the morning goes on – not least because there is not much else in the diary. In fact, the main news is likely to come late afternoon. Starmer is doing a marathon series of interviews with regional TV editors (26 of them, according to Politico), but their contents are embargoed until 5pm.
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Jonathan Reynolds on Sky News this morning. Photograph: Sky News