£17,000 severance for 36 hours in the job: How much year of political turmoil will cost taxpayers
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.”
World
In the idyllic Cognac region of southern France, Trump’s tariffs threaten a centuries-old way of life
The impact of Trump’s tariffs is reaching deep into every economy.
We travelled into the French rural heartland, heading for Cognac – the home of French brandy.
It is only half the size of Surrey but its exports to America are worth €1bn a year and that trade is now severely threatened.
The first buds are out on the vines of Amy Pasquet’s vineyard.
An American, she has married into the industry and with her French husband owns JLP Cognac.
She knows more than most the bond brandy has formed between their two countries that goes back to the war.
Tariffs latest: Follow live updates
Ms Pasquet said: “A lot of the African-American soldiers had really loved their experience here and had brought back the cognac. And I think that stayed because this African-American community truly is a community and they want to drink like their grandfather did.”
The ties remain with rappers like Jay Z’s love for cognac.
However, Ms Pasquet adds: “There’s also this other community of people who have been drinking bourbon for a long time, love bourbon, but find the prices just outrageous today. So they want to try something different.”
Amy Pasquet owns JLP Cognac with her husband
JLP’s products were served at New York’s prestigious Met Gala.
They were preparing to launch new product lines in the US. But now that’s in doubt.
It is hard being an American in France now, Ms Pasquet says.
Her French neighbours are appalled by what US President Donald Trump is doing.
She continues: “They’re like, okay, America’s forgotten how close France and America are as far as (their) relationship is concerned. And I think that’s hurtful on both sides. I think it’s important to remember that the US is many things, and not just this one person, and there are millions of inhabitants that didn’t vote for him.”
A fresh challenge for a centuries-old tradition
Making cognac takes years, using techniques that go back centuries. In another vineyard we met Pierre Louis Giboin whose family have been doing it for more than 200 years.
In a cellar dating back to the French Revolution, barrels of oak sit under thick cobwebs, ageing the brandy.
The walls are lined with a unique black mould that thrives off the vapours of cognac.
They have seen threats come and go over those centuries, wars, weather, pestilence. But never from a country they regard as one of their oldest allies and best of customers.
Read more:
What China could do next as Trump’s tariff war
How tariffs will affect your money
Could Trump’s tariffs tip the world into recession?
Pierre Louis Giboin’s cellar dates back to the French revolution
Mr Trump’s tariffs, says Mr Giboin, now threaten a way of life.
“It’s at the end of like very good times in the Cognac region. It’s been like 10 years when everything’s been perfect, we have good harvest, we sell really easily all the stock, but now I mean it’s the end.”
Ms Pasquet and Mr Giboin are unusual.
Most cognac makers sell their produce through the drink’s four big houses, Hennessy, Remy Martin, Martell and Courvoisier.
Some have been told the amounts they can sell have been drastically reduced.
Independents though like them must find new markets if the tariff threat persists.
Confusion away from the chaos
Outside in the dappled light of a Cognac evening Mr Giboin and I toast glasses of pineau – the diluted form of cognac drunk as an aperitif.
In this idyllic corner of France, a world away from Washington, Mr Trump’s trade war on Europe simply makes no sense.
“He’s like angry against the whole world and the way he talks like that Europe the EU was made against the US to cheat on the US. It’s just crazy to think like this,” Mr Giboin says.
It’s not just what Mr Trump’s done. It’s how Europe now strikes back that concerns the French. And it’s not just in Cognac where they’re concerned
France exports more than €2bn worth of wine to America.
In the heart of the Bordeaux wine region, Sylvie Courselle’s family have been making wine since the 1940s at their Chateau Thieuley vineyard.
It’s bottling season but they can’t prepare the wine headed for America while everything is up in the air.
Showing me the unused reels of US labels for her wine she told me she was losing sleep over the uncertainty.
Later she was meeting with her American distributors.
Gerry Keogh sells Ms Courselle’s wine across the US.
He says the entire industry is reeling
Sylvie Courselle with distributers
The Chateau Thieuley vineyard in the Bordeaux wine region
“I think it’s like anything. You don’t really believe it’s happening. And even when you’re in the midst of it, it was kind of like 9/11.
“You’re like… This is actually happening. It’s unbelievable. And when you start seeing the repercussions from the stock market, et cetera, and how it’s impacting every level, it’s quite shocking.”
They know the crisis is far from over and could now escalate.
“We feel stuck in the middle of this commercial war and we don’t have the weapons to fight, I think,” Ms Courselle said.
It is, she says, very stressful.
Gerry Keogh
The histories of America and France have been intertwined for centuries through revolutions against tyranny and two wars fighting for liberty.
America used to call France its oldest ally, but under Donald Trump its now seen here as turning on France and the rest of Europe in a reckless and unjustified trade war.
It is all doing enormous harm to relations between the US and its European allies.
How Europe now decides to retaliate will help determine the extent of that damage.
World
In the idyllic Cognac region of southern France, Trump’s tariffs threaten a centuries-old way of life
The impact of Trump’s tariffs is reaching deep into every economy.
We travelled into the French rural heartland, heading for Cognac – the home of French brandy.
It is only half the size of Surrey but its exports to America are worth €1bn a year and that trade is now severely threatened.
The first buds are out on the vines of Amy Pasquet’s vineyard.
An American, she has married into the industry and with her French husband owns JLP Cognac.
She knows more than most the bond brandy has formed between their two countries that goes back to the war.
Tariffs latest: Follow live updates
Ms Pasquet said: “A lot of the African-American soldiers had really loved their experience here and had brought back the cognac. And I think that stayed because this African-American community truly is a community. and they want to drink like their grandfather did.”
The ties remain with rappers like Jay Z’s love for cognac.
However, Ms Pasquet adds: “There’s also this other community of people who have been drinking bourbon for a long time, love bourbon, but find the prices just outrageous today. So they want to try something different.”
Amy Pasquet owns JLP Cognac with her husband
JLP’s products were served at New York’s prestigious Met Gala.
They were preparing to launch new product lines in the US. But now that’s in doubt.
It is hard being an American in France now, Ms Pasquet says.
Her French neighbours are appalled by what US President Donald Trump is doing.
She continues: “They’re like, okay, America’s forgotten how close France and America are as far as (their) relationship is concerned. And I think that’s hurtful on both sides. I think it’s important to remember that the US is many things, and not just this one person, and there are millions of inhabitants that didn’t vote for him.”
A fresh challenge for a centuries-old tradition
Making cognac takes years, using techniques that go back centuries. In another vineyard we met Pierre Louis Giboin whose family have been doing it for more than 200 years.
In a cellar dating back to the French Revolution, barrels of oak sit under thick cobwebs, ageing the brandy.
The walls are lined with a unique black mould that thrives off the vapours of cognac.
They have seen threats come and go over those centuries, wars, weather, pestilence. But never from a country they regard as one of their oldest allies and best of customers.
Read more:
What China could do next as Trump’s tariff war
How tariffs will affect your money
Could Trump’s tariffs tip the world into recession?
Pierre Louis Giboin’s cellar dates back to the French revolution
Mr Trump’s tariffs, says Mr Giboin, now threaten a way of life.
“It’s at the end of like very good times in the Cognac region. It’s been like 10 years when everything’s been perfect, we have good harvest, we sell really easily all the stock, but now I mean it’s the end.”
Ms Pasquet and Mr Giboin are unusual.
Most cognac makers sell their produce through the drink’s four big houses, Hennessy, Remy Martin, Martell and Courvoisier.
Some have been told the amounts they can sell have been drastically reduced.
Independents though like them must find new markets if the tariff threat persists.
Confusion away from the chaos
Outside in the dappled light of a Cognac evening Mr Giboin and I toast glasses of pineau – the diluted form of cognac drunk as an aperitif.
In this idyllic corner of France, a world away from Washington, Mr Trump’s trade war on Europe simply makes no sense.
“He’s like angry against the whole world and the way he talks like that Europe the EU was made against the US to cheat on the US. It’s just crazy to think like this,” Mr Giboin says.
It’s not just what Mr Trump’s done. It’s how Europe now strikes back that concerns the French. And it’s not just in Cognac where they’re concerned
France exports more than €2bn worth of wine to America.
In the heart of the Bordeaux wine region, Sylvie Courselle’s family have been making wine since the 1940s at their Chateau Thieuley vineyard.
It’s bottling season but they can’t prepare the wine headed for America while everything is up in the air.
Showing me the unused reels of US labels for her wine she told me she was losing sleep over the uncertainty.
Later she was meeting with her American distributors.
Gerry Keogh sells Ms Courselle’s wine across the US.
He says the entire industry is reeling
Sylvie Courselle with distributers
The Chateau Thieuley vineyard in the Bordeaux wine region
“I think it’s like anything. You don’t really believe it’s happening. And even when you’re in the midst of it, it was kind of like 9/11.
“You’re like… This is actually happening. It’s unbelievable. And when you start seeing the repercussions from the stock market, et cetera, and how it’s impacting every level, it’s quite shocking.”
They know the crisis is far from over and could now escalate.
“We feel stuck in the middle of this commercial war and we don’t have the weapons to fight, I think,” Ms Courselle said.
It is, she says, very stressful.
Gerry Keogh
The histories of America and France have been intertwined for centuries through revolutions against tyranny and two wars fighting for liberty.
America used to call France its oldest ally, but under Mr Trump it is now being as turned on, as France, along with the rest of Europe, finds itself in what many would argue is a reckless and unjustified trade war.
It is all doing enormous harm to relations between the US and its European allies.
How Europe now decides to retaliate will help determine the extent of that damage.
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