Susan Ann Gray, Baroness Gray of Tottenham, (born 1957) is a British politician, special adviser, and former civil servant who served as Downing Street Chief of Staff under Prime Minister Keir Starmer from July to October 2024, having previously served under Starmer as chief of staff to the Leader of the Opposition from 2023 to 2024.
She served from May 2021 to March 2023 as Second Permanent Secretary to the Cabinet Office, where she reported to the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. Her report into the Partygate scandal criticised the government led by Boris Johnson and contributed to his resignation as prime minister in September 2022 and ultimately to leaving Parliament in June 2023.
She resigned from the Civil Service in March 2023 to take up a job as chief of staff to the Leader of the Opposition, Keir Starmer. Her appointment provoked substantial controversy, and a Cabinet Office inquiry found that she had broken the Civil Service code. She was subject to scrutiny by the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments (Acoba), whose advice enabled her to work for the Labour Party from September 2023. When Starmer became Prime Minister following the 2024 General Election, Gray became his Downing Street chief of staff. Gray resigned after 4 months, citing the "intense commentary" around her position. Immediately after, her appointment as Envoy to the Prime Minister for the Nations and Regions was announced. In November 2024 it was confirmed Gray would not be assuming the role.
Born in north London in 1957, Gray is the daughter of Irish immigrants who moved to Tottenham in the early 1950s; her father was a furniture salesman and her mother a barmaid. She attended a state-funded Roman Catholic school. Following her father's sudden death in 1975, Gray abandoned her plan of going to university and joined the Civil Service straight from school. Her mother committed suicide after her father's death.
Gray took a career break in the 1980s, a step described by journalist Sam McBride as "strikingly unorthodox". During this time, she ran the Cove Bar, a pub in Newry, a border town in Northern Ireland, during The Troubles, with her husband Bill Conlon, a country music singer from Portaferry, County Down. Peter Cardwell, a former special adviser to several ministers, said it had been speculated Gray was a spy at this time, though Gray denied it. According to the Belfast Telegraph, her car was stopped one night by IRA paramilitaries who wanted to take it, only for her to be allowed to pass after a voice said "that's Sue Gray from The Cove, let her go on".
The family returned to London in 1987. Gray has family connections to Northern Ireland and is reported to have a fondness for the region, which she visits with her husband. She has two sons, including Liam Conlon, who is the chair of the Labour Party Irish Society and Member of Parliament for Beckenham and Penge.
Gray joined the Cabinet Office in the late 1990s, having previously worked at the departments of Health, Transport, and Work and Pensions. From 2012 she was director-general of the Propriety and Ethics team, and head of the Private Offices Group, directly under the Cabinet Secretary. This role gave her a wide-ranging remit over the operation of ministerial offices, public appointments, and government ethics. She frequently dealt with sensitive matters and 'crises' arising from the operation of government. As such, she was described in 2017 as "the woman who runs the country".
She was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2007 New Year Honours for services as Director, Propriety and Ethics, and Head of Management Unit for Private Offices, Cabinet Office.
In 2011, Gray advised Michael Gove that conducting government business via private e-mail accounts would make it exempt from transparency legislation. The following year, the Information Commissioner found this guidance to be incorrect and ruled that emails that pertained to departmental business would be subject to the Freedom of Information Act.
As part of her miscellaneous duties within the Cabinet Office, Gray was responsible for the 2010 reform of non-departmental public bodies.
She conducted the Cabinet Office inquiry into the behaviour of Andrew Mitchell during the 'Plebgate' affair in 2012. Mitchell later resigned as Chief Whip.
She was responsible for the inquiry into the behaviour of Damian Green in 2017. Green, a close ally of the then prime minister, Theresa May, was First Secretary of State and Minister for the Cabinet Office. He had been accused of sexual harassment and misusing office computers to view pornography. Green was sacked from his ministerial positions in December 2017, but resisted calls to stand down as an MP.
In January 2018, the Northern Ireland Executive announced that Gray would transfer to the Northern Ireland Civil Service as Permanent secretary of the Department of Finance in the Northern Ireland Executive from May 2018. In April 2018, it was announced that Gray had been replaced at the Cabinet Office by Helen MacNamara.
In 2020, Gray sought but failed to be appointed as the head of the Northern Ireland Civil Service, and in a subsequent interview with the BBC said: "I suspect people may have thought that I perhaps was too much of a challenger, or a disrupter. I am both…"
In May 2021, Gray returned to Whitehall to become the Second Permanent Secretary to the Cabinet Office, in charge of policy on the Union and the constitution. She reported to the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster - initially Michael Gove, who was replaced in September 2021 by Steve Barclay.
Following press reports about gatherings and parties on government premises during restrictions related to the COVID-19 pandemic in December 2021 – a scandal which became widely known as "Partygate" – the Cabinet Secretary Simon Case initiated and led an investigation into the allegations. A few days later he recused himself when it became known that an event had been held in his own office, and subsequently Gray took over the investigation.
Whether Prime Minister Boris Johnson knew about and participated in gatherings at Downing Street was part of the investigation. Gray's initial findings were published on 31 January 2022. In the report, Gray condemned "a serious failure" in the standards of leadership, and stated that a string of gatherings were "difficult to justify" while millions were unable to meet their friends and relatives. Publication of the full report was postponed pending the completion of an investigation by the Metropolitan Police. The police reported in May 2022 that their inquiries had resulted in 126 fixed penalty notices being issued. Gray's final report was delivered to Johnson on 25 May 2022 and was published later that morning. In a December 2022 article in The Guardian, Rajeev Syal wrote that friends of Gray said that she was "bruised" by the investigation.
Departure from the Civil Service