The Tory party chair, Richard Holden, actioned a £10,000 salary top-up for Lee Anderson last autumn, in a sign of how much he was valued as deputy chair. Anderson, who is the MP for Ashfield, lost the Tory whip on Saturday after saying that Islamists had “got control” of Sadiq Khan and that the London mayor had “given our capital city away to his mates”. He was the party’s deputy chair until a month ago, when he resigned to rebel over the government’s Rwanda bill. In a letter seen by the Guardian, Holden wrote to Anderson on 24 November that his deputy role would now come with the salary top-up. Holden had just been made chair, replacing Greg Hands. In his letter, he confirmed Anderson would remain a deputy chair and said the role came with “a basic salary of £10,000 per annum payable in monthly arrears for the period of you being in place”. A Tory official said that Anderson was ultimately never paid any of the top-up as the internal paperwork was not processed before his resignation. However, Holden’s decision to sanction the salary top-up demonstrates how Anderson’s contributions as deputy chair were valued under the current Conservative party leadership. Anderson was made a deputy chair by Rishi Sunak in February last year. The appointment divided the party, triggering concern among centrist Tory MPs who thought his penchant for making incendiary remarks repelled moderate voters. Hands, who was chair at the time of Anderson’s appointment, took the decision not to pay him the £10,000 salary that ordinarily comes with the role because Anderson had started earning £100,000 a year as a presenter on GB News at about the same time. The party’s decision changed after the last cabinet reshuffle in November, when Hands was demoted to trade minister and Holden replaced him as chair. Anderson’s comments about Khan on GB News on Friday were met with outrage from across the political spectrum including from some senior Tories, forcing the party to act.
But the deputy prime minister, Oliver Dowden, did not rule out re-admitting Anderson to the Conservative parliamentary party. Dowden told Times Radio on Sunday: “We gave him the opportunity to apologise. Of course, if he apologises, we’d look at the nature of that and make a determination at that point. But that’s a matter for the chief whip.” Separately, Dowden told the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg that if Anderson had apologised he would not have lost the whip. Anderson resigned as deputy chair in mid-January to vote for a rightwing amendment that would have toughened up the government’s Rwanda deportation bill. No 10 indicated soon after that Sunak would be open to welcoming Anderson back to the role at a later date. The prime minister’s press secretary said in late January: “I think we can say that we have a lot of time for Lee. He made it clear that he had concerns but actually he really supports getting this deterrent up and running.”