Tony Blair has signalled he will stand by the Lord Chancellor despite the row over his pay.

The announcement came following his close ally and former boss Derry Irvine announced he will not accept a £22,000 pay rise has been branded a humiliating U-turn by the Conservatives.

The official spokesman told journalists on Monday that "the prime minister fully supports his lord chancellor in the work that he does".

Lord Irvine's decision not to accept the 12.6 per cent rise, to which he was entitled under statute, was announced on Saturday after a barrage of media criticism.

He will now accept a 2.5 per cent rise in line with other Cabinet ministers.

The news that he would get a huge wage boost had prompted outrage, coming on the same day that hundreds of thousands of public sector workers were told they would get pay rises just above inflation.

The 2.5 per cent rise will now take the Lord Chancellor's pay from £180,045 to £184,096.

The Senior Salaries Review Body will now conduct a review of the relationship between judicial salaries and those of the senior civil service grades.

Reacting to the Lord Chancellor's announcement, shadow chancellor Michael Howard said it had been brought about by media pressure.

"What a humiliation for him...yesterday we were being told repeatedly all through the day that the Lord Chancellor would resist all the pressure for him not to take this increase, that he was determined to take it," he told Sky's Sunday With Adam Boulton programme.

"And then late last night in the most humiliating U-turn, he has obviously had to bow to pressure from somewhere and has now agreed not to take it.

"Yes it's the right thing not to take it, but my goodness what a humiliation for him after saying for so long he would take it."

Howard said the pay rise sent the wrong signals to other public sector workers.

"Public service pay, as is private sector pay, should be determined on the basis of what is needed to recruit, to retain and to motivate people.

"And if you need a 12.6 per cent increase to recruit, to retain and to motivate Derry Irvine as Lord Chancellor, there's something wrong somewhere," he said.

But there was backing for the move from Gordon Brown.

As the pay details were announced on Friday, the chancellor had called for "discipline" in public sector pay.

He risked seeing that call undermined by a huge rise for a top Cabinet minister and close ally of Tony Blair.

"Derry Irvine did not want this rise," Brown told BBC1's Breakfast With Frost.

"He did not choose to have this rise and he himself made his own personal decision that it was not right to take that rise while the review took place into the whole system of linking what is essentially performance related pay to judges' salaries.

"I believe that that's the right decision that was made. I think people should applaud him for not taking a rise that in statute he was entitled to have."

Brown said an "anomaly" in the way the pay for top judges and civil servants is linked was to blame for the row.

He said he had only become aware of the problem on Friday afternoon and added that "this cannot happen in the same way again".