Rishi Sunak has rehired five ministers who are entitled to redundancy payouts after resigning from government only seven weeks ago.
The new prime minister filled his cabinet with allies including Dominic Raab and Grant Shapps who were once loyal to Boris Johnson but switched to back Sunak as leader.
Ministers sacked and reappointed are able to claim thousands of pounds in redundancy pay as long as they have been out of a ministerial post for at least three weeks. Raab, Michael Gove, Steve Barclay, Grant Shapps and Johnny Mercer, who have all got their old jobs back after leaving Johnson’s government, are entitled to receive £16,876 each.
Shapps is understood to be donating half of the sum to charity, while Gove and Raab hope to pay back half of the sum on a pro-rata basis. Barclay and Mercer did not respond to calls for comment.
A Liberal Democrat source said: “It is absurd that Conservative ministers are effectively being treated to a taxpayer-funded mini-break. Conservative MPs are living it up on the back of government instability, while the country suffers.”
Labour’s deputy leader, Angela Rayner, said the ministers should have rejected the payments “if they had a shred of decency”.
There have been three ministerial reshuffles since Johnson finally decided to step down as prime minister in July. He formed a caretaker government as Tory members spent much of the summer deciding whether to make Truss or Sunak their party leader.
Truss sacked a number of Johnson’s allies, and filled the cabinet entirely with loyalists in a move to get her failed vision across. When Truss formed her cabinet, she welcomed back a host of ministers who resigned from office just two months ago in protest over Johnson’s leadership.
Kemi Badenoch quit her equalities role and would have been entitled to a redundancy payout before joining Truss’s cabinet as trade secretary, after impressing many with her Tory leadership contest performances.
Gove was sacked as levelling up secretary in a tense showdown in No 10 after he urged Johnson to step down as prime minister. He has since been reappointed as levelling up secretary, despite claiming he would not return to frontline politics.
Raab made a comeback to cabinet, gaining his old job of deputy prime minister and justice secretary, having kept a low profile during Truss’s government and championing Sunak as a unity candidate over the summer.
Christine Jardine, the Lib Dems’ Cabinet Office spokesperson, said the payouts should be stopped. Criticising the “revolving door bonus”, she said: “The money should be spent on helping the many people who are struggling under Conservative misrule.”
Rayner added: “Yet another parade of Tory ministers is set to walk away with thousands in taxpayers’ money handed out as rewards for their party’s catalogue of failure. If they had a shred of decency, they would already have made it clear that they will refuse these payments.
“Why should the public have to pick up the bill for the merry-go-round of resignations caused by the Tories’ revolving door of chaos? It’s time for the British public to get a proper say on the country’s future through a general election.”
