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Ministerial salaries

Most ministers in the UK Government are paid a ministerial salary. Under the Ministerial and other Salaries Act 1975, as amended by the Ministerial Salaries (Amendment) Act 2026, a maximum of 120 ministers can receive a salary. The list of ministers on gov.uk records when a minister is unpaid. As of October 2026, there are five unpaid ministers, all of whom sit in the House of Lords.

In addition to any ministerial salary, ministers in the House of Commons receive a separate MP’s salary. The House of Lords does not provide a salary for its members, though it does provide a flat rate Attendance Allowance that its members can claim for each sitting day they attend the House. Ministers in the House of Lords can only claim the Attendance Allowance if they do not receive a ministerial salary.

Legislation provides for ministers’ pay entitlements to increase each year. However, in practice, ministers have not claimed their full entitlements since 2007/08. The ministerial salaries claimed by ministers in both Houses in 2026 are shown in the table below.  In the House of Commons these are in addition to ministers’ salaries as MPs (which, for 2026/27, is £98,599).

Despite increasing entitlements, in practice ministerial pay in the Commons has not increased since 2007/08, with salaries cut in 2011/12 and frozen at their current level since 2014/15. Ministerial pay in the Lords has followed the same pattern, with the exception of 2019/20, when there was a one-off increase in Lords ministers’ salaries to compensate for the increases that Commons ministers had seen to their MP salaries.

Rules on ministerial salaries

There is no overall cap on the number of ministers that can be appointed to the UK Government. However, there are limits on the number of ministers that can be paid and on the number of ministers (paid or unpaid) that can be drawn from the House of Commons.

The Ministerial and other Salaries Act 1975 allowed for salaries to be paid to 109 ministers. This included 26 salaries for the Lord Chancellor, the law officers (the Attorney General, Solicitor General, and the Advocate General for Scotland), and government whips. From the remaining 83 salaries, a maximum of 50 salaries could be paid at Minister of State rank or higher, of which a maximum of 21 salaries could be paid at Secretary of State rank.

The 1975 act also allowed for salaries to be paid to eight other positions:

• The Speaker of the House of Commons
• The Speaker of the House of Lords
• The Leader of the Opposition in the House of Commons
• The Opposition Chief Whip (Commons)
• Up to two assistant whips (Commons)
• The Leader of the Opposition in the House of Lords
• The Opposition Chief Whip (Lords)

The Ministerial Salaries (Amendment) Act 2026 increased the number of salaries that could be paid, allowing for up to 120 ministers to receive a salary. The act also increased the number of salaries that could be paid at each rank. Now, from the 94 salaries not allocated to particular ministerial roles, a maximum of 54 salaries can be paid at Minister of State rank or higher, of which a maximum of 22 salaries can be paid at Secretary of State rank.

Ministers can be drawn from either House of Parliament but, under the House of Commons Disqualification Act 1975, only 95 ministers can sit in the House of Commons. There are no restrictions on the number of ministers who can sit in the House of Lords. However, as only 120 can receive a salary, any additional ministers must be unpaid. All governments since 2010 have included unpaid ministers, the majority of whom have been drawn from the House of Lords.

Changes to ministerial salaries over time

Before 1996, the government uprated ministerial salaries in line with MPs’ salaries through secondary legislation. However, there was no legislation or parliamentary resolution that required the two salaries to be linked.

In 1996, a report of the Senior Salaries Review Body (SSRB) recommended that the uprating formula and implementation date used for MPs’ salaries should be applied to ministers and other paid office holders. From 1997 to 2007, MPs’ salaries were uprated in line with the mid-point of senior civil service (SCS) pay bands, with salary increases taking effect from 1 April each year.

The SSRB’s recommendations were accepted by the House of Commons and implemented through the Ministerial and other Salaries Act 1997, which amended the 1975 act of the same name. Under section 1 of the 1997 act, ministers’ salaries (like MPs’ salaries) were uprated in line with the mid-point of SCS pay bands. Salary increases were implemented from 1 April each year.

The Ministerial and other Salaries Act 1975 (Amendment) Order 2026 changed the statutory formula used to determine ministerial salaries again, as it had been misapplied since 1997. While under the 1997 act, ministerial salary entitlements should have increased in line with the mid-point of SCS pay bands, in practice they had been increased in line with the mid-point of SCS pay bands excluding permanent secretaries. The order reset ministerial salary entitlements and brought the uprating formula in line with this existing practice.

However, ministers have not claimed their full entitlements since 2007/08. While MPs’ salaries increased, ministerial salaries decreased under the Coalition Government to keep ministers’ total remuneration at the same level. Ministerial salaries have been effectively frozen since 2014/15 in the Commons and 2019/20 in the Lords.

Pay freeze from 2007 to 2010

In its 2007 report, the SSRB recommended increasing ministerial salaries and setting them at a fixed proportion of MPs’ salaries. The report recommended that by April 2010 the Prime Minister should be paid 3.5 times the salary of a backbench MP and Secretaries of State should be paid 2.6 times the salary of a backbench MP, when accounting for both their MPs’ salaries and their ministerial salaries.

If these recommendations had been implemented, by April 2026 the Prime Minister would be paid a total of £345,000 (rather than £174,000, as now) and Secretaries of State would be paid £256,000 (rather than £166,000, as now).

However, the government rejected the SSRB’s recommendations and announced that ministerial salaries would continue to increase in line with the uprating formula set in 1997.

While Gordon Brown was Prime Minister from 2007 to 2010, ministers’ official salary entitlements continued to increase in line with the uprating formula in the Ministerial and other Salaries Act 1997. However, ministers did not claim the additional pay and accepted freezes to their ministerial salaries from 2008/09 to 2010/11.

In this period, Gordon Brown reduced the salary he claimed as Prime Minister. Although entitled to £198,661 through his combined ministerial and MP salaries, he received £150,000 at the time of the 2010 general election.  It is not clear when he took the salary cut as it was not made public until after Parliament had been dissolved for the 2010 general election.

For further details on ministerial pay freezes in the 2005 Parliament, see the Commons Library research paper Members’ pay and expenses – current rates and a review of developments since 2009.

Pay cut and freeze in the 2010 Parliament

In May 2010, the incoming coalition government announced that new ministers would “be paid five per cent less than Ministers received in the previous administration”, and that it would impose a ministerial pay freeze for the entirety of the 2010 Parliament.

This reduction was implemented through the Ministerial and other Salaries Act 1975 (Amendment) Order 2011. Under the order, the total remuneration that ministers received (including their MP salary) was reduced by 5%. They continued to receive their MPs’ salaries in full, with the entire reduction coming from their ministerial salaries.

While the order reduced ministers’ pay at the beginning of the Parliament, it did not provide for ministerial salaries to be formally reduced in later years as MPs’ salaries increased. Instead, as MPs’ salaries increased in 2013/14 and 2014/15, ministers waived the increase to their ministerial salary to keep their overall remuneration at the same level. For example, the Treasury’s annual report shows that ministerial salaries received by Treasury ministers were lower in 2013/14 than in 2012/13.

Pay freeze in the 2015 Parliament

The 2011 order set ministerial salary entitlements throughout the 2010 Parliament. It provided that they should increase in line with the existing formula from the day after Parliament was dissolved. Accordingly, ministerial salary entitlements increased by 0.62% with effect from 31 March 2015. The order provided for them to remain at that level until 31 March 2016.

After the 2015 general election, on 24 May 2015, Prime Minister David Cameron wrote in the Sunday Times: “I’ve decided to freeze the pay of the ministers in the government”. The BBC reported that the Prime Minister had extended the ministerial pay freeze and indicated that ministers would continue to receive the same total remuneration as they had received at the beginning of the 2010 Parliament.

At that point, the total remuneration that the Prime Minister received stood at £149,440. Since then, the ministerial element of Commons ministers’ total pay has remained frozen.

Pay freeze, and pay increase for Lords ministers, in the 2017 Parliament

Following the June 2017 general election, ministerial pay remained unchanged. The 2015 Parliament’s freeze applied until 31 March 2018 and, in April 2018, the government committed to continue to freeze ministerial salaries.

However, in May 2019, the Leader of the House of Lords announced that Lords ministers would see an increase in their salaries. She noted that there had been a “disparity between the treatment of Lords Ministers and Commons Ministers”, as Commons ministers had received increases in their MPs’ salaries since May 2015, while Lords ministers had received no increase in their remuneration. She explained that the increase would be implemented by allowing Lords ministers to claim the full salaries to which they were entitled under legislation, while Commons ministers would continue to waive the increases to their formal entitlement since 2015.

Pay freeze in the 2019 Parliament

Ministerial salary data released by the Cabinet Office in September 2022 shows that the salaries claimed by ministers in 2022 remained frozen at the same levels as in 2015 (for Commons ministers) and as in 2019 (for Lords ministers).

Pay freeze in the 2024 Parliament

Explanatory notes to the Ministerial Salaries (Amendment) Act 2024-26 (PDF) confirmed that ministerial salaries remained frozen as of March 2026. The Leader of the House of Lords also confirmed in a debate in April 2026 that, “The ministerial pay freeze remains in place”.

Ministerial salary data released in September 2026, after Andy Burnham became Prime Minister, confirmed that he had “chosen to retain a freeze on ministerial salaries”.

Payments to former ministers

Departing ministers are entitled to severance payments. Ministers are also enrolled in the Ministers’ Pension Scheme.

Severance payments

Ministers are entitled to a severance payment of 25% of their annual salary when they cease to hold office. A departing minister will not qualify if they are over the age of 65, or if they are reappointed to ministerial office within three weeks.

Since July 2025, ministers have been expected to waive a ministerial severance payment if they have served for less than six months, or if they have committed a serious breach of the Ministerial Code that led to their departure. Ministers can also choose to waive their entitlement to severance pay.

More information can be found in the Commons Library research briefing on Ministerial severance pay.

Pensions

Former ministers receive a pension for their time in the role through the Ministers’ Pension Scheme. They will also receive a separate pension for their time as Members of Parliament through the MPs’ Pension Scheme. Both schemes form part of the Parliamentary Contributory Pension Fund.

Until the passage of the Public Service Pensions Act 2013, separate arrangements were made for the pensions of the Prime Minister, the Speaker of the House of Commons and the Lord Chancellor. These entitled the office holders to a pension of half of their final salary on leaving office, regardless of the length of their service in the role. These pensions are paid through the Consolidated Fund.

More information can be found in the Commons Library research briefing on Pensions of ministers and senior office holders.

Salary entitlements and amounts received by ministers since March 2015