Why are UK civil servants incomes greater than Prime Minister Keir Starmer? – Firstpost

The variety of civil servants in the UK incomes salaries similar to — and in lots of instances larger than — the British prime minister has surged over the previous two years.

In accordance with official information launched by the UK Cupboard Workplace, a whole lot of presidency workers are actually incomes six-figure salaries that equal or surpass UK PM Keir Starmer’s earnings.

In simply two years, the variety of civil servants receiving annual salaries between £150,000 and £200,000 has greater than doubled.

Between March 2023 and March 2025, this bracket grew by 114 per cent, with a 49 per cent improve in 2024 adopted by an extra 44 per cent in 2025 to date.

As of the newest figures, 375 civil servants fall inside this pay band, and one other 35 earn over £200,000 per 12 months.

These people are primarily engaged in high-level coverage, administration, and supply roles, usually at director stage or above.

Their roles are thought-about important to the functioning of central authorities, and in some instances require area of interest technical experience that instructions aggressive salaries.

The figures exclude frontline professions reminiscent of medical consultants or members of the armed forces, reported the Monetary Instances.

The place the UK PM stands on the pay ladder

UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer receives a complete wage of just below £170,000, comprising a Member of Parliament’s base pay of £93,904, together with an extra entitlement of roughly £80,000 for main the federal government.

Consistent with the custom adopted by predecessors together with David Cameron, Starmer doesn’t declare the complete entitlement.

Regardless of holding the nation’s most senior political workplace, the UK premier is now out-earned by at the very least 278 civil servants.

This consists of a number of officers who work straight with him. As an example, Morgan McSweeney, Starmer’s chief political adviser, earns between £155,000 and £159,999.

Jonathan Powell, who as soon as performed a central function in brokering peace in Northern Eire, and Varun Chandra, a former company intelligence government turned enterprise adviser to the Prime Minister, each fall into the £145,000-£149,999 bracket, reported the Monetary Instances.

The vast majority of ministerial advisers obtain between £76,000 and £115,000, whereas round a 3rd are paid lower than £76,000 yearly.

Have been the prime minister’s wage to be adjusted in step with inflation from 2010 — the 12 months Gordon Brown’s successor accepted a pay minimize — the annual remuneration would now be north of £300,000, in keeping with the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales.

Why civil servants are paid mor

In July, new pointers issued by the UK Treasury raised the wage cap for civil servants whose pay requires ministerial sign-off from £150,000 to £174,000 — a rise of £24,000 or 16 per cent.

Concurrently, the cap for performance-related bonuses requiring oversight rose from £17,500 to £25,000.

This alteration impacts roughly 260 people within the £150,000-£200,000 wage vary and about 30 whose earnings exceed £200,000.

Moreover, 2,915 civil servants are actually recorded as incomes above £100,000 yearly.

In accordance with the Treasury, the earlier threshold had remained static since 2017, regardless of broader wage progress in each the private and non-private sectors.

Defending the replace, a Treasury spokesperson acknowledged: “The earlier threshold for senior civil servants’ salaries was set in 2017, and since then, common pay throughout the personal and public sector has risen. The brand new, below-inflation, threshold rise would apply to a minority of senior civil servants and could be topic to rigorous scrutiny.”

Nonetheless, the coverage has confronted political backlash. The TaxPayers’ Alliance, a fiscal advocacy group, criticised the choice, suggesting it lacked ample transparency.

“Taxpayers shall be outraged that high civil servants are being handed much more beneficiant pay raises with much less oversight,” William Yarwood informed The Telegraph.

“This quiet rule change opens the floodgates to inflated salaries behind closed doorways at a time when Whitehall needs to be making cuts.”

Conservative UK MP Richard Holden echoed the sentiment, labelling the revised framework as a “grubby deal” and accusing the Labour-led authorities of prioritizing its public sector allies.

“They’re a celebration in hock to public sector pay, and attempting to sneak out bumper pay offers for mandarins and quangocrats by the again door reveals they don’t have the nationwide curiosity at coronary heart,” he informed the Every day Mail.

How inflation has formed the UK public sector

The spike in civil service salaries is carefully
linked to inflation-driven changes designed to take care of wage competitiveness. The Senior Salaries Evaluate Physique advisable a 5.5 per cent elevate for senior civil servants in 2023-24, adopted by a 5 per cent improve within the subsequent cycle.

By April, civil servants obtained an extra 3.25 per cent uplift to base salaries, reflecting easing
inflationary stress.

Nonetheless, these cumulative will increase — applied to guard buying energy and keep away from a expertise exodus — have resulted in additional officers crossing the six-figure mark.

Knowledge from the Institute for Authorities estimates the entire wage invoice for civil servants reached roughly £19 billion in the latest monetary 12 months.

The median wage throughout the service stood at £35,680 in March 2025, a 5 per cent improve from the earlier 12 months, or a 2.6 per cent rise after adjusting for inflation.

In recent times, the civil service workforce has grown considerably. As of 2025, round 550,000 people are employed, amounting to 516,000 full-time equivalents — the very best since 2006.

Plans are actually underway to cut back headcount by 10 per cent throughout the present parliamentary time period, with the purpose of reversing progress attributable to pressures from Brexit and the COVID-19 pandemic.

The median gender pay hole has additionally narrowed to six.4 per cent in 2025, down from 8.5 per cent the earlier 12 months — the smallest since such data started in 2020.

Amidst continued fiscal constraint on the general public, revenue tax and nationwide insurance coverage thresholds have been frozen for the reason that 2021-22 monetary 12 months, and Starmer has not too long ago declined to decide to lifting this freeze earlier than 2029-30.

Additionally, in her first Funds, UK Chancellor Rachel Reeves additionally prolonged the freeze on inheritance tax thresholds till the tip of the last decade — a cap that has remained unchanged since 2009.

Why the hole is barely going to extend

Past common wage changes, one of many key forces behind rising public pay is
the demand for cybersecurity and digital experience.

The UK authorities has repeatedly acknowledged that attracting top-tier expertise in these areas requires compensation ranges effectively above conventional public sector norms — even larger than the prime minister’s wage.

Showing earlier than the Public Accounts Committee in March, the UK civil service’s Chief Working Officer Cat Little mentioned, “Now we have bought to pay these folks extra… They’re very, very scarce aggressive abilities in a highly regarded market, and if we’re going to ship on our ambitions, we’d like the management and the technical experience there to do it.”

Her feedback got here within the wake of a Nationwide Audit Workplace report that criticised the federal government’s restricted progress towards reaching cyber resilience, a objective set for 2025.

Recruitment constraints — together with uncompetitive salaries — had been cited as one of many key obstacles to reaching this goal.

Little additionally famous that new frameworks had been launched to handle digital pay disparities, acknowledging that expert cyber professionals couldn’t be anticipated to hitch the civil service beneath the identical wage construction as generalist roles of equal seniority.

UK MP Rachel Gilmour, additionally a part of the Committee, underlined the long-term fiscal logic of those selections, reported The Register.

She referred to the expensive ransomware assault on the British Library in 2023 and argued that hiring a couple of high-skilled cybersecurity professionals may considerably cut back the state’s vulnerability to comparable threats.

“The fixation shouldn’t be on how a lot a person is paid however extra so on the potential value financial savings,” Gilmour mentioned.

With inputs from companies