Prime Minister's Salary

What do children think would be a fair Wage for the Prime Minister?

Do you know how much the Prime Minister is paid in annual salary? No? Let me tell you – Boris Johnson receives an annual sum of £150,000 a year, plus over £5,000 in expenses, free accommodation, free transport and other perks.

This is not enough, according to the Prime Minister. Reports claim that he can no longer afford to hire a nanny now he is PM. Before taking the role Boris earned his MP salary of £82,000, along with the money he made form writing a newspaper column, and payments for speaking engagements. This came to much more than he currently receives from the tax payer.

So, what would be a fair salary for our Prime Minister – what he gets now, significantly more or much less? For our latest survey we wanted to find out what children think. And adults too for that matter. We asked 1,161 children what they thought a fair annual salary for the Prime Minister would be.

The results were fairly evenly divided so opinion seems to be split. We gave four possible answers: About £1 million a year, About £500,000 a year, About £150,000 a year, or About £50,000 a year. This is what we found:

• 26% of children believe the Prime Minister should be paid £1 million per year
• 20% think he should get £500,000
• 26% say his current salary of £150,000 is adequate
• 28% would rather see his pay cut to £50,000 per year. An amount still almost twice the average salary

As you can see, there is no clear majority. The largest vote was for £50,000 but only slightly behind it was for a rise to £1 million - the opposite extreme.

How much do heads of government earn worldwide?

Our Prime Minister does quite well compared to the leaders of other countries. Of the 197 members of the United Nations, the UK ranks 30th in terms of government leader’s salary. The Sultan of Brunei comes first with the equivalent of $1,986,768,000. Bringing up the rear is the President of Uzbekistan on $15,600. The average is about $55,000 or £41,000.

Adult results

The answers we got from adults were slightly different. They appear to be much less generous than their offspring! Here’s what they thought:.

• 21% believe the Prime Minister should be paid £1 million per year
• 19% think he should get £500,000
• 27% say his current salary of £150,000 is enough
• 33% would rather see his pay cut to £50,000 per year

As you can see, a third of adults think the prime Minister is paid far too much – a clear winner. Until you add together those who think he should be paid more than three times his current salary and those who think he should get 7 times more. Then 40% think he deserves a raise.