THE Labour Party has pledged to reform the rules on taxpayer-funded severance payments handed out to government ministers when they leave their jobs.
Under the current rules, Jackie Doyle-Price, the MP for Thurrock since 2010, was able to claim a £7,920 payout in October 2022, even though she had only earned £4,241 during her seven weeks working as an industry minister in Liz Truss’s government.
Ms Doyle-Price was also recently made a Dame in Liz Truss’s resignation honours, in recognition of the loyal support she gave to Ms Truss throughout her campaign to become the Conservative leader and her short-lived premiership.
Dame Jackie was one of ninety-seven Tory ministers who claimed severance payments during the political chaos of 2022/23, when Liz Truss was one of three different Prime Ministers in office in Downing Street. It was recently revealed that the total severance bill over the course of that financial year cost UK taxpayers £933,086.
Since 1991, when John Major was in Downing Street, ministers have been legally entitled to three months’ wages at their current annual salary when they leave their post, no matter how long they have been in the job, or the reasons for their departure.
Labour says that, if the party is elected to government later this year, it will change the law so that individuals can only claim a quarter of their actual earnings as a minister in the previous twelve months, not a quarter of their annual salary. In the case of Jackie Doyle-Price, that would have brought her payout down from £7,920 to £1,060.
Labour is also proposing two other changes to what it calls the ‘glaring loopholes’ in the current law on severance payments.
– First, any ministers who lose their jobs because of allegations of misconduct or breaches of the ministerial code will in future have their payouts suspended, and quashed entirely if those allegations are upheld.
– Second, any minister who returns to a new job while still enjoying the benefit of their severance payment will have the corresponding amount clawed back. At present, ministers are only required to refund their payouts if they return to government within three weeks.
Altogether, Labour has calculated that – if its proposed reforms to the severance rules had been in place in 2022/23 – the total cost of ministerial payouts would have been cut by more than 40 per cent in that year, from £933,086 to £555,093, a saving for UK taxpayers of £377,993, including a £6,860 reduction in the payment to Jackie Doyle-Price.
Jen Craft, Labour’s candidate to take on Jackie Doyle-Price in Thurrock at the next general election, welcomed the new proposals on ministerial severance from the office of Labour leader, Keir Starmer, saying:
“It’s hard to know what is worse: the fact that our local MP loyally supported Liz Truss while her economic gamble created financial misery for people in Thurrock; the fact that she was rewarded for that service with a damehood; or the fact that she walked away with three months of taxpayers’ money in severance after just seven weeks of work.
“The truth is that, at a time when mortgages were sky rocketing for thousands of households in Thurrock as a result of Liz Truss and her mates, all Jackie Doyle Price was concerned about was lining her own pockets, and adding a title to her name.
“The people of Thurrock deserve a local MP who is going to work her heart out every day to support the families who live in this community, not someone like Jackie Doyle-Price who just sees politics as a way to feather her own nest.”
