Severance pay to ousted ministers could hit £726k this year – but who will be paid the most?
Britain’s year of political turmoil could cost the taxpayer up to £726,000 in severance payments to former ministers and whips, Sky News analysis of House of Commons library data has found.
Since the beginning of the year, 79 government ministers and whips have either been sacked or have resigned.
And 71 of them are likely to be eligible for payments averaging more than £10,000 – no matter how long they were in the job.
To receive the lump sum, they cannot return to government within three weeks of leaving their post.
This means anyone shuffled out by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak on Tuesday will be eligible for a payment as long as they do not return to a paid government role by 15 November.
Our calculations are based on what they will be eligible to receive if they remain on the backbenches for that period.
Brandon Lewis: £34,000
Mr Lewis, who most recently served as justice secretary under Liz Truss, is eligible for the largest sum, with two payments totalling nearly £34,000 – more than the £31,676 that nurses earn on average in a year.
He is eligible for one payment due to his resignation as Northern Ireland secretary in July – in protest at Boris Johnson’s refusal to stand down – and for a second payment due to the loss of his position as justice secretary during Mr Sunak’s reshuffle.
In a year of political chaos, 2022 has seen three prime ministers and numerous reshuffles. The result has been a record level of turnover on the government benches, resulting in a large number of people eligible for severance payments.
The number of cabinet appointments this year is already more than twice as high as in any year since 1979, according to the Institute for Government.
In July, Boris Johnson announced he would stand down as PM after dozens of MPs resigned in protest at his handling of sexual assault allegations against former deputy chief whip Chris Pincher.
Liz Truss: £385 per day
Ms Truss consigned a further 30 ministers and whips to the backbenches in her first three days as PM.
Both Mr Johnson and Ms Truss are eligible for the most generous individual payments, at £18,860 each.
For Ms Truss, who served just seven weeks in the top job, that represents £385 per day in office. Her total potential sum is more than the £10,120 which she would have earned in the role from her salary, if paid on a pro-rata basis.
Kwasi Kwarteng: £444 per day
Mr Kwarteng, who was forced to resign as chancellor over the mini-budget, is eligible for nearly £17,000.
That’s equivalent to £444 for each day he was in the job, and is more than twice the amount he would have earned from his official salary as chancellor if paid pro-rata (£7,023).
Suella Braverman, who resigned as home secretary on 19 October, will not be eligible for a payment as she returned to the frontbench just six days later – within the three-week cut-off window.
Overall, 32 MPs could claim more in severance payments than they earned in the job.
Conor Burns: £7,290
Former trade minister Conor Burns is set to receive a severance payment of £7,290 – three times his pro-rata salary of £2,602.
He was fired in October after just one month in the role after losing the whip for an allegation of “serious misconduct” at the Conservative Party conference.
Anyone leaving a paid position in government can claim – regardless of whether they willingly resigned, were fired or stepped down in disgrace.
The only conditions are that they don’t return to a job within three weeks, are under the age of 65 and did not die in office.
Chris Pincher: £8,000
Mr Pincher, who resigned as a government whip in July following allegations of sexual assault, was eligible for a payment of nearly £8,000.
Sky News has contacted those eligible for payments, but many of them have yet to respond.
Some donate severance payments to charity
Michelle Donelan has said she will donate her payment to a local charity.
She qualified for a payment of nearly £17,000 after serving as education secretary for less than 36 hours under Boris Johnson.
The office of Dominic Raab, who was reappointed as justice secretary on Tuesday, told Sky News he is planning to return part of his £16,876 payout.
Grant Shapps spent just 43 days out of ministerial office after resigning as transport secretary under Mr Johnson, but could claim nearly £17,000 in severance for his trouble. His office said he will be donating around half of his payment to an HMRC-recognised charitable account he uses.
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Reshuffle: How the day unfolded
Severance pay to Labour in 2010: £1m
When responding to an Urgent Question about severance payments in July, then Cabinet Office minister Harriet Wheeler said: “The severance pay for ministers is established in legislation that was passed by Parliament in 1991 and that has been used by successive administrations over several decades.
Ms Wheeler added: “Reshuffles are a fundamental part of the operation of government and, by their nature, routinely remove ministers from office, and that, unlike in other employment contexts, there are no periods of notice, no consultations and no redundancy arrangements.”
She pointed out severance payments had been made and accepted during the Blair and Brown years in office, adding: “To ensure transparency, severance payments are published in the annual reports and accounts of government departments.
“As an example of the previous operation of this provision, the data published in 2010 indicated severance payments made to Labour ministers in that year amounted to £1m.”
Changes to how death certificates are issued in England and Wales have made the grieving process more “stressful”, according to bereaved families.
Anne Short died on New Year’s Eve, only a few months after she was diagnosed with cancer.
Her son Elliot, 30, from Newport, South Wales, says the grieving process was made harder after having to wait eight weeks to hold her funeral.
“Quite frankly, it’s ridiculous, when you’re already going through all this pain and suffering as a family,” he told Sky News.
“You can’t move on, you can’t do anything, you can’t arrange anything, you can’t feel that they’re at peace, you can’t put yourself at peace, because of a process that’s been put in that nobody seems to know anything about at the moment.”
That process has been introduced by the government to address “concerns” about how causes of death were previously scrutinised, following high-profile criminal cases such as those of Harold Shipman and Lucy Letby.
Up until last September, causes of death could be signed off by a GP, but now they have to be independently scrutinised by a medical examiner, before a death certificate can be issued.
Anne Short
‘I felt helpless’
Mr Short said he was ringing “twice a day” for a progress update, but that it was “going through too many sets of hands”.
Until the death certificate was issued, Ms Short’s body could not be released into the care of the funeral director.
“The main stress for me was knowing that she was up there [at the hospital] and I couldn’t move her, so I felt helpless, powerless,” he said.
“I felt like I’d let her down in a lot of ways. I know now, looking back, that there’s nothing that we could have done, but at the time it was adding a lot of stress. I just wanted her out of there.”
Elliot Short had to wait eight weeks to hold his mother’s funeral
‘Something has to be done’
Mr Short fears there’s a risk the new process might defeat its purpose.
“There’s other people that I know that have lost since, where it’s been in a care home or something like that, where they haven’t been happy with the care they’ve had, but they haven’t raised that because you’re in this bubble of grief and you just want to get it done,” he said.
“Something has to be done about that because I think it just drags on the grief and there’s obviously a danger then of it being against the reasons why they’re trying to do it.”
Arrangements after the death of his father less than two years ago was a “much easier process”, according to Mr Short.
“I lost my father as well 15 months before, so we went through the process prior to this coming in and we had the death certificate, he died at home, but we had it within three days,” he added.
Elliot Short
‘State of limbo’
James Tovey is the sixth generation of his family running Tovey Bros, a funeral director in Newport.
He told Sky News that the delays were having a “huge impact” on the business and that the families they serve were being “left in a state of limbo” for weeks after their bereavement.
“I would say that most funerals will take place perhaps two to four weeks after the person’s passed away, whereas now it’s much more like four to six weeks, so it is quite a significant difference,” he said.
“It’s one thing on top of an already distressing time for them and we’re frustrated and upset for [the families] as much as anybody else and it’s just annoying that we can’t do anything about it.”
James Tovey
Mr Tovey said that the reform was “very useful” and he remained supportive of it.
“It’s just the delays. I’m sure they can do something about that over time, but it’s just waiting for that to happen, and I wish that could be addressed sooner rather than later,” he added.
“It does put pressure on other people, it’s not just ourselves, it’s pressure on the hospitals, on crematoria, on the registrar service and everyone else involved in our profession.
“But of course all of us we’re there to serve the families, and we’re just upset for them and wish we could do more to help.”
The organisation representing funeral directors has called for “urgent action”
The National Association of Funeral Directors said some areas of England and Wales are experiencing much shorter delays than others, but has called for “urgent action”.
Rachel Bradburne, its director of external affairs, said the system was “introduced for all the right reasons” but that it was “not working as well as we need it to”.
“Funeral directors are relaying stories of delays, frustration, and bottlenecks on a daily basis, and urgent action is required to review and recalibrate the new system,” she added.
‘Unintended consequences’
Dr Roger Greene is the deputy chief executive of bereavement charity AtALoss.
He told Sky News that the delays were “one of the unintended consequences of what’s a well-intended reform of a system”.
“What has actually happened is that the number of deaths now requiring independent scrutiny has trebled,” he said.
“So in England and Wales in 2023, the last full year of data, there were nearly 200,000 deaths reported to a coroner, whereas there were 600,000 deaths.
“Now, what is the change in the process is that all deaths now need to be reported for independent scrutiny.”
Dr Roger Greene
Dr Greene said there may be ways the system could be “tweaked a little bit”, such as giving medical examiners the ability to issue an interim death certificate.
“We believe that people can process grief well if they’re given the opportunity and they’ve got a proper understanding,” he added.
“But the systems that we have in the country need to be able to work as well with that diversity of faith and culture.”
‘Vital improvements’
Jason Shannon, lead medical examiner for Wales, told Sky News he recognised “the importance of a seamless, accurate and timely death certification process”.
“Medical examiners are one part of the wider death certification process and were introduced to give additional independent safeguards as well as to give bereaved people a voice, which they hadn’t had before,” he added.
“Medical examiners have no role in determining where the body of a family’s relative is cared for and except in a minority of deaths where a coroner needs to be involved, that decision should be one that a family is fully empowered to make in a way that is best for them.”
A Welsh government spokesperson said they “would like to apologise to any families who have experienced delays in receiving death certificates”.
The government said it was working with the lead medical examiner and the NHS in Wales “to understand where the delays are” and how to provide bereaved families with “additional support”.
Read more from Sky News:
Families feel impact of spiralling funeral costs
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A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Social Care said it recognised there were “some regional variations in how long it takes to register a death”.
They added that the changes to the death certification process “support vital improvements to patient safety and aim to provide comfort and clarity to the bereaved”.
Social media influencers are fuelling a rise in misogyny and sexism in the UK’s classrooms, according to teachers.
More than 5,800 teachers were polled as part of the survey by the NASUWT teaching union, and nearly three in five (59%) of teachers said they believe social media use has contributed to a deterioration in pupils’ behaviour.
The findings have been published during the union’s annual conference, which is taking place in Liverpool this weekend.
One motion that is set to be debated at the conference calls on the union’s executive to work with teachers “to assess the risk that far-right and populist movements pose to young people”.
Andrew Tate was referenced by a number of teachers who took part in the survey, who said he had negative influence on male pupils.
One teacher said she’d had 10-year-old boys “refuse to speak to [her]…because [she is] a woman”.
Another teacher said “the Andrew Tate phenomena had a huge impact on how [pupils at an all-boys school] interacted with females and males they did not see as ‘masculine'”.
While another respondent to the survey said their school had experienced some incidents of “derogatory language towards female staff…as a direct result of Andrew Tate videos”.
Last month, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer hosted a discussion in Downing Street on how to prevent young boys from being dragged into a “whirlpool of hatred and misogyny”.
The talks were with the creators of Netflix drama Adolescence, which explored so-called incel culture.
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‘An urgent need for action’
Patrick Roach, the union’s general secretary, said “misogyny, racism and other forms of prejudice and hatred…are not a recent phenomenon”.
He said teachers “cannot be left alone to deal with these problems” and that a “multi-agency response” was needed.
“There is an urgent need for concerted action involving schools, colleges and other agencies to safeguard all children and young people from the dangerous influence of far-right populists and extremists,” Mr Roach added.
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A spokesperson for the Department for Education (DfE) said: “Education can be the antidote to hate, and the classroom should be a safe environment for sensitive topics to be discussed and where critical thinking is encouraged.
“That’s why we provide a range of resources to support teachers to navigate these challenging issues, and why our curriculum review will look at the skills children need to thrive in a fast-changing online world.”
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