Paymaster General

United Kingdom His Majesty's Paymaster General
Royal Arms of His Majesty's Government
Incumbent Nick Thomas-Symonds since 8 July 2024
Cabinet Office
Style	Paymaster General The Right Honourable (within the UK and Commonwealth)
Appointer	The King (on the advice of the Prime Minister)
Inaugural holder	Henry Parnell
Formation	27 April 1836
Website	Official website

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His Majesty's Paymaster General or HM Paymaster General is a ministerial position in the Cabinet Office of the United Kingdom. The position is currently held by Nick Thomas-Symonds of the Labour Party.

The post was created in 1836 by the merger of the positions of the offices of the Paymaster of the Forces (1661–1836), the Treasurer of the Navy (1546–1835), the Paymaster and Treasurer of Chelsea Hospital (responsible for Army pensions) (1681–1835) and the Treasurer of the Ordnance (1670–1835).

Initially, the Paymaster General only had responsibilities in relation to the armed services but in 1848 two more offices were merged into that of Paymaster General: the Paymaster of Exchequer Bills (1723–1848) and the Paymaster of the Civil Service (1834–1848), the latter followed by its Irish counterpart in 1861. They thus became 'the principal paying agent of the government and the banker for all government departments except the revenue departments and the National Debt Office'.^[2]

From 1848 to 1868, the post was held concurrently with that of Vice-President of the Board of Trade.

The longest-serving holder of the post was Dawn Primarolo, whose portfolio covered HM Customs and Excise and the Inland Revenue (which during her tenure became merged as HM Revenue and Customs) and who served from 1999 to 2007.

Today, the Paymaster General is usually a minister without portfolio available for any duties which the government of the day may designate. The post may be combined with another office, or may be left unfilled.

Though the Paymaster General was titular head of the Paymaster General's Office, their executive functions were delegated to the Assistant Paymaster General, a permanent civil servant who (though acting in the name of the Paymaster General) was answerable to the Chancellor of the Exchequer.^[2]

The Paymaster General was formerly in nominal charge (and at one time in actual charge) of the Office of HM Paymaster General^[3] (OPG), which held accounts at the Bank of England on behalf of government departments and selected other public bodies. Funds which were made available from the Consolidated Fund were then channelled into OPG accounts, from where they were used by the relevant body. OPG operated a full range of accounts and banking transaction services, including cheque and credit, BACS and CHAPS services for its customers via an electronic banking system. Integration of OPG accounts held with commercial banks was provided by the private company Xafinity Paymaster which is now part of the Equiniti group.

However, in 2008, the government announced that the Office of the Paymaster General would be incorporated into a new body, the Government Banking Service,^[4] which also provides banking operations for HM Revenue & Customs and National Savings and Investments. Following the Bank of England's decision to withdraw from providing retail banking services,^[5] retail banking and payment services for the GBS are provided by a range of financial institutions including Barclays, Citibank, NatWest, and Worldpay,^[6] although the Bank of England still plays a role in managing the government's higher level accounts.^[7]

• Sir Henry Parnell, Bt. 1836–1841
• Edward Stanley 1841
• Sir Edward Knatchbull, Bt. 1841–1845
• Bingham Baring 1845–1846
• Thomas Babington Macaulay 1846–1848
• Granville Leveson-Gower, 2nd Earl Granville 1848–1852
• Edward Stanley, 2nd Baron Stanley of Alderley 1852
• Charles Abbot, 2nd Baron Colchester 1852
• Edward Stanley, 2nd Baron Stanley of Alderley 1853–1855
• Edward Pleydell-Bouverie 1855
• Robert Lowe 1855–1858
• Richard Hely-Hutchinson, 4th Earl of Donoughmore 1858–1859
• Algernon Percy, Lord Lovaine 1859
• James Wilson 1859
• William Cowper 1859–1860
• William Hutt 1860–1865
• George Goschen 1865–1866
• William Monsell 1866
• Stephen Cave 1866–1868
• Frederick Hamilton-Temple-Blackwood, 1st Earl of Dufferin 1868–1872
• Hugh Childers 1872–1873
• William Adam 1873–1874
• Stephen Cave 1874–1880
• David Plunket 1880
• George Glyn, 2nd Baron Wolverton 1880–1885
• Frederick Lygon, 6th Earl Beauchamp 1885–1886
• Thomas Hovell-Thurlow-Cumming-Bruce, 5th Baron Thurlow 1886
• Frederick Lygon, 6th Earl Beauchamp 1886–1887
• Adelbert Brownlow-Cust, 3rd Earl Brownlow 1887–1889
• Victor Child Villiers, 7th Earl of Jersey 1889–1890
• Robert Windsor-Clive, 14th Baron Windsor 1890–1892
• Charles Seale-Hayne 1892–1895
• John Hope, 7th Earl of Hopetoun 1895–1899
• Charles Spencer-Churchill, 9th Duke of Marlborough 1899–1902

• Savile Crossley 1902–1905
• Richard Causton (1st Baron Southwark after 13 July 1910) 1905–1910
• Ivor Guest, 1st Baron Ashby St Ledgers 1910–1912
• Edward Strachey, 1st Baron Strachie 1912–1915
• Thomas Legh, 2nd Baron Newton 1915–1916
• Arthur Henderson 1916
• Joseph Compton-Rickett 1916–1919
• Tudor Walters 1919–1922
• Office vacant 1922–1923
• Neville Chamberlain 1923
• William Joynson-Hicks 1923
• Archibald Boyd-Carpenter 1923–1924
• Harry Gosling 1924
• Office vacant 1924–1925
• George Sutherland-Leveson-Gower, 5th Duke of Sutherland 1925–1928
• Richard Onslow, 5th Earl of Onslow 1928–1929
• Sydney Arnold 1929–1931
• Office vacant 1931
• Tudor Walters 1931
• Ernest Lamb, 1st Baron Rochester 1931–1935
• Robert Hutchison, 1st Baron Hutchison of Montrose 1935–1938
• Geoffrey FitzClarence, 5th Earl of Munster 1938–1939
• Edward Turnour, 6th Earl Winterton 1939
• Office vacant 1939–1940
• Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, Viscount Cranborne 1940
• Office vacant 1940–1941
• Maurice Hankey 1941–1942
• William Jowitt 1942
• Frederick Lindemann, 1st Baron Cherwell 1942–1945
• Office vacant 1945–1946
• Arthur Greenwood 9 July 1946 Lab
• Hilary Marquand 5 March 1947 Lab
• The Viscount Addison 2 July 1948 also Leader of the House of Lords Lab
• The Lord Macdonald of Gwaenysgor 1 April 1949 Lab

Paymaster General			Term of office		Concurrent office(s)	Political party	Prime Minister
		Frederick Lindemann Viscount Cherwell	30 October 1951	11 November 1953		Conservative		Winston Churchill (III)
		George Douglas-Hamilton Earl of Selkirk	11 November 1953	20 October 1955
Office vacant			20 October 1955	18 October 1956				Anthony Eden (Eden)
		Walter Monckton MP for Bristol West	18 October 1956	16 January 1957
		Reginald Maudling MP for Barnet	16 January 1957	14 October 1959				Harold Macmillan (I)
		Percy Mills Viscount Mills	14 October 1959	9 October 1961				Harold Macmillan (II)
		Henry Brooke MP for Hampstead	9 October 1961	13 July 1962	Chief Secretary to the Treasury
		John Boyd-Carpenter MP for Kingston-upon-Thames	13 July 1962	19 October 1964	Chief Secretary to the Treasury			Alec Douglas-Home (Douglas-Home)
		George Wigg MP for Dudley	19 October 1964	12 November 1967		Labour		Harold Wilson (I & II)
Office vacant			12 November 1967	6 April 1968				Harold Wilson (II)
		Edward Shackleton Baron Shackleton	6 April 1968	1 November 1968
		Judith Hart MP for Clydesdale	1 November 1968	6 October 1969
		Harold Lever MP for Manchester Cheetham	6 October 1969	23 June 1970
		David Eccles Viscount Eccles	23 June 1970	2 December 1973	Minister for the Arts	Conservative		Edward Heath (Heath)
		Maurice Macmillan MP for Farnham	2 December 1973	4 March 1974
		Edmund Dell MP for Birkenhead	4 March 1974	10 September 1976		Labour		Harold Wilson (III & IV)
		Shirley Williams MP for Hitchin	10 September 1976	4 May 1979	Secretary of State for Education and Science			James Callaghan (Callaghan)
		Angus Maude MP for Stratford-on-Avon	4 May 1979	5 January 1981		Conservative		Margaret Thatcher (I)
		Francis Pym MP for Cambridgeshire	5 January 1981	14 September 1981	Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (5 January 1981 – 14 September 1981) Leader of the House of Commons (5 January 1981 – 5 April 1982)
		Cecil Parkinson MP for South Hertfordshire	14 September 1981	11 June 1983	Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (6 April 1982 – 11 June 1983)
Office vacant			11 June 1983	11 September 1984				Margaret Thatcher (II)
		John Gummer MP for Suffolk Coastal	11 September 1984	1 September 1985
		Kenneth Clarke MP for Rushcliffe	2 September 1985	13 July 1987	Minister of State for Employment
		Peter Brooke MP for City of London and Westminster South	13 July 1987	24 July 1989				Margaret Thatcher (III)
		Malcolm Sinclair Earl of Caithness	25 July 1989	14 July 1990
		Richard Ryder MP for Mid Norfolk	14 July 1990	28 November 1990				John Major (I)
		John Ganzoni Baron Belstead	28 November 1990	11 April 1992	Minister of State for Northern Ireland
		John Cope MP for Northavon	14 April 1992	20 July 1994				John Major (lI)
		David Heathcoat-Amory MP for Wells	20 July 1994	20 July 1996
		David Willetts MP for Havant	20 July 1996	21 November 1996
		Michael Bates MP for Langbaurgh	21 November 1996	2 May 1997	Lord Commissioner of the Treasury (17 October 1995 – 11 December 1996)
		Geoffrey Robinson MP for Coventry North West	2 May 1997	23 December 1998		Labour		Tony Blair (I)

Paymaster General			Term of office		Concurrent office(s)	Political party	Prime Minister
		Dawn Primarolo MP for Bristol South	4 January 1999	28 June 2007		Labour		Tony Blair (I, II, III)
		Tessa Jowell MP for Dulwich and West Norwood	28 June 2007	11 May 2010	Minister for the Olympics Minister for the Cabinet Office (from 5 June 2009) Minister for London (until 3 October 2008; from 5 June 2009)			Gordon Brown (Brown)
		Francis Maude MP for Horsham	12 May 2010	11 May 2015	Minister for the Cabinet Office	Conservative		David Cameron (I)
		Matt Hancock MP for West Suffolk	11 May 2015	14 July 2016				David Cameron (II)
		Ben Gummer MP for Ipswich	14 July 2016	13 June 2017				Theresa May (I)
		Mel Stride MP for Central Devon	13 June 2017	23 May 2019	Financial Secretary to the Treasury			Theresa May (II)
		Jesse Norman MP for Hereford and South Herefordshire	23 May 2019	24 July 2019
		Oliver Dowden MP for Hertsmere	24 July 2019	13 February 2020	Minister for the Cabinet Office			Boris Johnson (I & II)
		Penny Mordaunt MP for Portsmouth North	13 February 2020	16 September 2021				Boris Johnson (II)
		Michael Ellis MP for Northampton North	16 September 2021	6 September 2022	Minister for the Cabinet Office (from 8 February 2022)
		Edward Argar MP for Charnwood	6 September 2022	14 October 2022	Minister for the Cabinet Office			Liz Truss (Truss)
		Chris Philp MP for Croydon South	14 October 2022	25 October 2022
		Jeremy Quin MP for Horsham	25 October 2022	13 November 2023				Rishi Sunak (Sunak)
		John Glen MP for Salisbury	13 November 2023	5 July 2024
		Nick Thomas-Symonds MP for Torfaen	8 July 2024			Labour		Keir Starmer (Starmer)

Shadow Paymaster general			Term of office		Party	Opposition Leader
		Richard Ottaway	1 June 2000	1 June 2001	Conservative	Hague
		Stephen O'Brien	1 June 2002	1 June 2003	Conservative	Duncan Smith
		Andrew Tyrie	1 June 2004	1 June 2005	Conservative	Howard
		Mark Francois	10 May 2005	3 July 2007	Conservative
						Cameron
		Jack Dromey	14 May 2021	4 December 2021	Labour	Starmer
		Fleur Anderson	4 December 2021	4 September 2023	Labour
		Jonathan Ashworth	4 September 2023	5 July 2024	Labour
		John Glen	8 July 2024	Incumbent	Conservative	Sunak

• Office of the Paymaster General – archived version, as of June 2008. Since then the OPG website redirects to the new GBS site:
• Government Banking Service