Sir Keir Starmer earns £172,153 a year (Image: Getty)
Dozens of top managers in government agencies earn more than the Prime Minister.
There are 176 fat cats in so-called quangos with bigger salaries than the PM, new research found.
And spending on the agencies, which are publicly-funded but operate independently of government departments, has shot up by a quarter since the pandemic.
The Government bodies spent £33 billion on quangos last year.
The highest paid quangocrats raked in more than £300,000 last year, an investigation by the Sunday Telegraph found. The Prime Minister’s salary is £176,000.
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It follows a study of the latest annual accounts filed by 119 bodies in England, Scotland and Wales.
They publish pay figures for senior staff including basic salaries, bonuses, allowances and their pension benefits.
Those earning more than the PM include three staff at the Coal Authority, recently renamed as the Mining Remediation Authority, as well as three at Historic Environment Scotland, which maintains properties including Edinburgh Castle.
Marian Spain, the chief executive of Natural England, was paid £195,000, the same as four executives at the Environment Agency and six employees at Homes England.
A Cabinet Office spokesman said: “We are making sure every part of government is delivering on working people’s priorities… It is right that people expect public bodies to be held accountable, run effectively and [be] aligned with these priorities.”
The Treasury has ordered departments to find efficiency savings of 5% but it is feared that the rising cost of borrowing could mean cuts go even deeper. Ms Reeves has said she is determined to get borrowing down and also to avoid further tax hikes, suggesting cuts may be the only option left in order to balance the books.
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Darren Jones, who as Chief Secretary to the Treasury acts as Ms Reeves’s deputy, said that public spending is “long overdue a reckoning” and warned the Government cannot “keep spending more and more money”.
In a speech earlier this week he said: “As a moderniser with an optimism about the future for Britain, I just do not accept the idea that we should just keep spending more and more money for continued poor outcomes.”
Borrowing in the financial year so far is £129.9 billion, £8.9 billion more than the same period a year earlier and a record outside of the mammoth borrowing seen at the height of the pandemic in 2020.
Year-to-date borrowing is also about £4 billion more than the £125.9 billion forecast by the Office for Budget Responsibility.