The Story of Gordon Brown’s salary “cut”…

There’s a great little story feeding the man in the pub at the moment…

The Story

“Did you know that the last act of Gordon Brown before he left office was to cut the Prime Minister’s salary from £195,000 to £150,000? It was in the paper at the weekend – absolute fact. What a petty bastard.”

Despite any opinions that it would be impossible for a Prime Minister to do this (and besides, wouldn’t there be much more coverage if that was the case?), he stuck to his guns.

The article fuelling this appears to be Mandrake in the Telegraph who got it from a man in Whitehall who apparently harrumphs – a few other blogs picked it up, notably Guido Fawkes, where the commentators predictably went nuts. But is it actually true?

The Facts

Well, at the morning press briefing on the 7th June held by David Cameron’s spokesman, the question came up…

“…the PMS said the Prime Minister’s salary, both the Ministerial and Parliamentary salaries were set by the Senior Salaries Review Board.  The Prime Minister was entitled to a salary of approximately £198k.

It was right that the previous Prime Minister voluntarily decided to cut that to £150k and on 13 May there was an announcement that all Ministers were going to receive a 5% pay cut and that applied to the Prime Minister too.”

So, Brown actually got paid £150,000. Cameron will get £142,500. No secret pay cut. No story.

Get over it!

The vast majority of the country thinks Brown was the worst Chancellor/Prime Minister ever, but making up bizarre stories makes these people look as sad as the left-wingers who wanted to assassinate Thatcher. He’s gone, in the past – can we now just get on with trying to rebuild the place?

Update

More background on how the PM’s salary is set…

As explained here, ministers’ salaries are subject to the Senior Salaries Review Board, and governed by the Ministerial and Salaries Act of 1975 as amended by Orders, the draft of which must be passed by a resolution of both houses of Parliament. As this table shows, the last such Order was in 2008.