Sir Keir Starmer has finally broken his silence on the row over Sue Gray’s salary after it emerged she earns £3,000 a year more than the Prime Minister she serves.

However, the Labour leader remained tight-lipped about the furore, telling The Guardian in an interview: “I’m not going to talk about individual salaries for any member of staff.”

It was the first time Sir Keir had been asked about why his chief of staff in Downing Street earns more than him.

A Labour source quipped that Ms Gray, a former senior civil servant, “is the only pensioner better off under Labour” following the party’s drastic cut to winter fuel payments for most elderly people.

Ms Gray was reportedly warned prior to accepting the huge £170,000 sum – at least £25,000 more than Liam Booth-Smith, Rishi Sunak’s chief of staff, was earning – that it would cause outrage.

A source told the BBC, which broke the news: “It was suggested that she might want to go for a few thousand pounds less than the Prime Minister to avoid this very story. She declined.”

Sir Keir earns £166,786.

In his Guardian interview, the PM is quoted as following his remarks by saying: “I’m the person who runs the Government. I’m the person that takes the decisions and I’m the person that takes responsibility for those decisions.”

It has been suggested that Ms Gray is the most powerful woman in Whitehall who is pulling the strings behind the scenes.

Revelations over Ms Gray’s pay have reportedly sparked a revolt among Labour special advisers, one of whom apparently threatened to “pack up and go home”.