Brown denies forcing Irvine to turn down £22,000 pay rise

Gordon Brown entered the furore over Lord Irvine of Lairg's £22,000 pay rise yesterday, insisting that the affair "cannot be allowed to happen in the same way again".

The Lord Chancellor was forced to back down on Saturday amid bitter criticism of the pay rise, announcing that he would forgo the 12.6 per cent increase, pending a review of the arcane laws linking his pay with that of senior judges and civil servants.

Instead, Lord Irvine will receive the same 2.25 per cent pay rise as his Cabinet colleagues, taking his salary from £180,045 to £184,096.

Mr Brown denied reports that he had put pressure on Lord Irvine to turn down the pay rise. "It's an anomaly," He told the BBC's Breakfast with Frost programme. "It's got to be sorted out. A review has been recommended. This cannot happen in the same way again, and I believe this will be sorted out in the course of the next few months."

Lord Irvine's pay rise, worth four times the rate of inflation, came about because of legislation which requires the Lord Chancellor's salary to be £2,500 above that of the Lord Chief Justice, whose pay is linked in turn to performance-related rises paid to the Cabinet Secretary, Britain's most senior civil servant.

A statement issued by the Lord Chancellor's Department on Saturday said the Senior Salaries Review Body was to review the link in pay.

Mr Brown said: "Derry Irvine did not want this rise. "He did not choose to have this rise and he himself made his own personal decision that it was not right to take that rise while the review took place into the whole system of linking what is, essentially, performance-related pay to judges' salaries.

"I believe that that's the right decision that was made. I think people should applaud him for not taking a rise that in statute he was entitled to have," he said.

But Lord Richard, the former Labour leader of the Lords, said: "It does seem to me to be a bit unthinking not to have spotted the row that was going to be caused, because there was bound to be a tremendous row if his pay went up £22,000 – more than the starting salary of a teacher."