The Prime Minister has been accused of “trying to pressure the BBC into dropping a story” about his ex Chief of Staff’s pay being higher than his own.
It is believed that Keir Starmer requested that his cabinet secretary Sir Simon Case contact BBC political editor Chris Mason before he revealed Sue Gray’s £170,000 salary.
Case - who was meant to serve as an impartial civil servant during this time - called the corporation’s director general Tim Davie to explain No10’s concerns about the story.
Gray resigned from her Downing Street role last October - at the same time Labour was battling the freebie scandal which engulfed swathes of its MPs and ministers alike.
Sue Gray resigned from her Downing Street role last October
PA
She was soon to be replaced by Morgan McSweeney while the ex civil servant refused to take on another role as an envoy to devolved bodies.
In December, Starmer awarded her with a peerage so that she would become Baroness Gray of Tottenham.
In the book diving into “The Inside Story of Labour Under Starmer”, journalists Patrick Maguire and Gabriel Pogrund report that Case claimed some aspects of the story were not accurate.
However, once Downing Street had been informed that Mason and Davie trusted their sources, the story still ran.
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According to the journalists’ accounts, Number 10 did not try to block the story any further but maintained their queries about some of the story’s specific details.
Gray began to cause controversy when she was appointed the top investigator of Boris Johnson’s lockdown parties.
She caused Tory politicians to lash out at her impartiality in the role once she left her civil service position to become Starmer’s Chief of Staff in 2023.
An internal row behind the closed doors of Downing Street came to light after a leak revealed to the BBC that Gray was earning £3,000 more than the PM.
An internal row behind the closed doors of Downing Street came to light after a leak revealed to the BBC that Gray was earning £3,000 more than the PM
PA
Gray quit her position as Starmer's top aide at the start of October, explaining: "In recent weeks it has become clear to me that intense commentary around my position risked becoming a distraction to the Government's vital work of change."
It was said that she had been offered a role as envoy to the Council of the Nations and Regions but, a month later, the Prime Minister's Office confirmed that she had refused the job.
GB News has contacted the Cabinet Office for comment.
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