TORY council leader Councillor Jason Stacey has given himself a pay rise of nearly £12,000.

Increases in councillors' allowances takes his to £38,950 a year, despite shis saying the council needs to save around £16 million.

The announcement at Tuesday's council meeting was met with anger by the opposition.

Councillor Sonika Nirwal, leader of the Labour group, said Councillor Stacey had put pressure on her before the meeting to persuade her not to debate the rises.

"He did not want a debate in public," she said. "He did not want me to talk, he did not want it discussed. It is embarrassing for anyone putting their money up but he has chosen to do £11,788 for himself."

The deputy council leader, Councillor Ian Gibb, and the Mayor, Councillor Diana Pagan, were also singled out for big cash bonuses, with Councillor Gibb's allowances rising £9,500 to £28,950, and the Mayor's jumping £12,305 to £23,950 a year.

The increases take the total spent on councillors' allowances to more than £1 millon a year for the first time.

Councillor Nirwal said: "We weren't happy about the rises for himself, the Mayor and the deputy leader from the start.

"He told me if we didn't vote with him he would pull the whole motion and not discuss it again. I told him that would be fine."

But Councillor Stacey, who has given up his full-time job, strongly rejected the claim, aying Labour were just trying to "pull the rug" from under the Tories by opposing the proposals.

"I am extremely disappointed with the Labour Party," he said. "They are angry because I did not bow down to their inflated demands. We put the shadow cabinet members in band-one but they wanted a 7.5 per cent rise, not the 5 per cent we have proposed.

"What I wanted was to avoid an unseemly public row like we did have. We have to do this once in a while. It is not good and not nice but the timetable was not picked by us."

Both groups had been involved in drafting the motion for the last month.

The plans had originally been discussed with ex-Labour leader Leo Thomson at the beginning of the year.

"We have made the process transparent," said Councillor Stacey. "If we were to act on recommendations by the Association of London Government my wage would have risen to £51,115, but clearly that is not an option."

"I felt we had an agreement before the meeting they never said to me they wanted to pull the motion.

"I will be watching very closely to see if they now take the allowances because, of course, they are optional. If they are opposing on moral grounds let's see how moral they are."

Labour shadow cabinet members will get an increase of £2,000 to £5,850 a year, with Councillor Nirwal getting the same as the Tory cabinet, rising almost £8,000 to £14,950.

Chief whips and committee chairmen also got increases.

Councillor Stacey said his party wanted to be fair and should match up with other London borough pay levels.

But Councillor Nirwal said: "The job of leader has not changed dramatically. We talk to our staff about performance-related pay schemes but they are awarding the bonus before the work has been done.

"We never increased the allowances significantly, only in line with inflation. We felt it was hypocritical to say to staff we want to slash your budgets, things are really tight, by the way, we want to bump our own money up."

The new allowances will be paid from August 1.