Three things we know – and some things we don’t – about the Labour government’s special advisers

Labour appointed a whole host of new special advisers (spads) after entering government last July. While we know little about the current batch, aside from reports about concerns around pay and some key personnel changes in No.10, Keir Starmer’s political team has continued to take firmer shape.

Labour has fewer special advisers than Rishi Sunak’s government 

The government has not yet released its annual report on special advisers, so we do not know exactly how many spads are currently employed by the government and what they are paid. But using departmental transparency releases about special advisers’ gifts and meetings, we have found that between October and December 2024, there were 119 special advisers employed by government. This is fewer than the 128 spads in Rishi Sunak’s government in March 2024, though is not outside the norm for recent years.

As always, ministers must balance their need for greater political support via more spads with making sure that an enlarged political team does not detach them from the officials who must deliver their policies.  

Starmer has proportionally fewer spads than any recent prime minister

While just under one third of all spads in government work for No.10, this is proportionally fewer spads employed by the prime minister at any point since the coalition government (which saw a significant proportion of spads assigned to Nick Clegg as the deputy prime minister).

No.10 is a relatively small and much more political operation than the rest of government, and despite the Labour government offsetting the concentration of spads at the centre a prime minister whose ‘mission-led government’ is guided by goals that do not sit neatly within departmental silos needs strong political support.

Starmer has already reconfigured his top team – first with the replacement of Sue Gray as chief of staff with Morgan McSweeney and more recently with the departure of his head of communications, Matthew Doyle ⁷ Chris Mason and Jennifer McKiernan, ‘PM’s spokesman quits Downing Street after nine months’ BBC News, 28 March 2025, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cvg1g1ld95no  and the appointment of an “expert adviser” on education and skills. ⁸ Prime Minister’s Office, ‘Appointment of Oli de Botton as the PM’s Expert Adviser on Education, 03 April 2025, https://www.gov.uk/government/news/appointment-of-oli-de-botton-as-the-pms-expert-adviser-on-education-and-skills  This does suggest that Starmer has given more consideration to how he wants to strengthen his No10 operation since coming into government.

The proportion of female spads has risen – but lags behind other areas of politics

This Labour special adviser cohort has proportionally more women previous governments. The proportion of female special advisers is at its joint highest (40%) with  the coalition government in 2013, though the numbers are not a major departure from what we have seen from more recent spad cohorts. 

But gender balance among special advisers is lower than other areas of politics – there are proportionally more women in the parliamentary Labour Party (46%) and in Starmer’s cabinet (48%). In departments that have more than one spad, there are no women special advisers in the Cabinet Office, Foreign Office, or the Scotland and Wales offices and only one (shared) female spad between Defra and DESNZ. 

The government needs to be more transparent over spad pay and seniority 

Nine months into this Labour government, we are still in the dark about many aspects of the spad cohort. The government is legally required to publish an annual report on the number and costs of special advisers, but the first such report issued by the Labour government in November 2024 covered only the Conservative spad cohort that had since left office. The current government isn’t alone in limiting what information it releases – the annual publication requirement means an official report was never published about spads serving under Liz Truss’s premiership.

But it is important that we know more about special advisers – especially those currently in post. This is even more salient with the current cohort: in the autumn there were reports of discontent amongst the spads over pay and conditions, with some joining a union as a result.  Pay scales – which had declined significantly in real terms since 2010 – have reportedly been rebanded.

Special advisers play an important function in government – as ministerial appointees who are exempt from the impartiality requirements of the civil service, they bring a political lens to the way policies are developed and communicated. 

Knowing how this government uses them – how many there are, what they are paid, and how much power they yield – is key to understanding how government works. The picture is becoming clearer, but sooner rather than later we will see a more complete set of data released by the government.