Boris Johnson flat row: What do we know about the PM’s finances?
The Electoral Commission is investigating the circumstances surrounding who originally paid for the refurbishments on the prime minister's flat above 11 Downing Street.
Boris Johnson says he has now paid for it himself, and that he has done everything within the rules. But newspaper reports said he initially told aides that he couldn't afford it. So what do we know about his income? How much is the prime minister paid? In 2020-21, Boris Johnson was entitled to a salary of £79,936 as prime minister. He claimed £75,440 of it. That is on top of his entitlement to his salary as MP for Uxbridge and South Ruislip, which is £81,932. So that's a total salary of £157,372. He also gets to use the Downing Street flat rent-free as well as the country house Chequers in Buckinghamshire. He does have to pay tax on some of the bills paid for his residence, such as heating, lighting and repairs, but that is capped at 10% of his ministerial salary, so he can't be asked to pay more than about £8,000 a year. And he gets an allowance of up to £30,000 a year for refurbishing the Downing Street flat. What are his other sources of income? Members of Parliament have to declare their sources of income. We know that Mr Johnson owns 50% of a home in London and 20% of a home in Somerset, which together generate a rental income of at least £10,000 a year. That's the point where property has to be declared by an MP but the precise rental value is not given in the register of interests. He also receives payments for his books, including one about Winston Churchill, and a political novel. In the most recent register of interests, he declared payments from publishers of £23,500 between April 2020 and March 2021. What has he declared in the past? Hannah White from the Institute for Government said: "The prime minister has a bit of a record on being late on these things." She pointed to reports from the standards committee in the House of Commons, which detailed 10 instances where he'd been late in declaring financial interests. "It's fair to say it's possibly not something that he has a history of giving great priority to," she added. Boris Johnson made a "full and unreserved" apology to MPs in 2018 - before he became prime minister - for declaring items late, amounting to more than £52,000 in income. And there was a further report the following year, criticising his initial failure to declare the 20% stake in a property in Somerset. There was also confusion surrounding £15,000 worth of holiday accommodation in St Vincent and the Grenadines, that he and his partner enjoyed between 26 December 2019 and 5 January 2020. The register said it had been donated by Carphone Warehouse co-founder David Ross, but it later turned out that Mr Ross had "facilitated" the holiday rather than paying for it, which left opposition MPs questioning the precise nature of the arrangement. Downing Street said that everything was done within the rules. Is Mr Johnson short of cash? It is clear that Mr Johnson had to take a considerable pay cut when he became foreign secretary, and again when he became prime minister. The register shows that he had a lucrative career as a public speaker, including earning: He was also well-paid as a columnist for the Daily Telegraph. Between July 2018 and July 2019 he was paid £22,916.66 a month by the newspaper, which he said occupied him for 10 hours a month. He also wrote for other publications, such as The Spectator. Details published when he was Mayor of London show that between 2011-12 and 2014-15, he had an average taxable income of just under half a million pounds a year. There have been widely reported comments from Mr Johnson about his financial position. When he was Mayor of London in 2009 he told the BBC's Hardtalk programme that his £250,000 a year salary from the Telegraph was "chicken feed", adding that he made "a substantial donation to charity". In October 2017, when he was foreign secretary, the Sunday Times reported that he had told a friend he was running out of money and could not afford to live on £141,505 because of his "extensive family responsibilities". Mr Johnson has been divorced twice, most recently from Marina Wheeler, with whom he has four children. He has a one-year-old son, Wilfred, with his fiancee, Carrie Symonds.