Question to the Cabinet Office:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government how many Ministers in each House are unpaid; how this compares with the 2010–15 Parliament; and whether they plan to legislate for all Ministers to receive salaries.

There are currently three unpaid Ministers in the House of Commons and seven unpaid Ministers in the House of Lords. During the 2010 – 2015 Parliament a total of six Ministers in the House of Commons and twenty Ministers in the House of Lords held unpaid roles. There are currently no plans to amend the limits on the number of Ministerial salaries set by legislation.

The table below lists the number of unpaid Ministers across the Parliaments since 1985:

Please note that the Tables of Ministerial Offices from which these numbers are taken have changed in format over the time concerned and there may be gaps looking back over a 30 year period. Therefore, the figures provided from some of the earlier Parliaments are an approximation.