Cummings got 50% rise to £140,000!
As majority of public sector handed pay freeze...
DOMINIC Cummings received a secret pay rise of up to 50 per cent before he walked out of No 10 last month.
Boris Johnson’s former chief adviser made great play of the fact that he was paid less than £100,000 when he took the job.
But new documents reveal that last year Mr Cummings’s salary shot up to between £140,000 and £145,000, meaning his pay soared by at least £40,000 and possibly as much as £50,000.
The revelation comes at a time when millions of public sector workers have been told they will receive a pay freeze. It also means his pay was barely less than the £150,000 his boss Mr Johnson got last year.
A total of 16 of the Government’s special advisers, known as ‘Spads’, earn more than £100,000, with 14 reporting to the Prime Minister and two to the Chancellor.
The list includes Allegra Stratton, the PM’s new press secretary who will give televised briefings from next year. She is on between £125,000 and £130,000.
Mr Johnson’s personal photographer, Andrew Parsons, is on a full-time equivalent salary of at least £100,000, although as he works part-time he will not take home this amount.
Mr Cummings’s huge salary increase means he got a higher pay- off when he left Downing Street last month.
Labour deputy leader Angela Rayner said: ‘Boris Johnson defended Dominic Cummings when he broke lockdown rules – then awarded him a £50,000 pay rise. Yet he’s freezing pay for key workers and refusing to give our care workers a pay rise to the living wage.
‘Cummings’s bumper bonus is an insult to key workers. It’s another example of how under this Government it is one rule for the Tory party and their friends and another for the rest of us.’
Serving Government advisers reacted angrily to the revelation of Mr Cummings’s pay rise.
One said: ‘People are furious. He personally turned down so many pay requests from relatively low-paid advisers, and he’d always tell them: “We don’t do this job for pay”.’ Another added: ‘ It’s just bare- faced hypocrisy. He always said he was going to introduce bonuses for people who he thought were doing good jobs but all he actually did was negotiate himself an eye-watering pay hike.
‘He must have thought he was doing a great job, but I’d be surprised if that is a widely held view.’
Mr Cummings, pictured, gained notoriety when he travelled to Durham at the height of the first national lockdown.
Last month he left his No 10 post along with his ally, head of communications Lee Cain. The Cabinet Office’s annual report on special advisers said: ‘Lee Cain and Dominic Cummings are in the process of leaving their government posts and are not included in the above list. They are, however, included in the December FTE [full-time equivalent] numbers. Both individuals were in pay band £140,000-£144,999.’ While Mr Cain was on the same salary last year, Mr Cummings was on £95,000 to £99,999. The report also reveals that of the 16 Spads on more than £100,000, just four are women.