Tory Greg Hands refusing to hand back £7,900 payout despite new job weeks later

23 October 2023 , 11:32

643     0

Greg Hands received the severance payout even though he was out of Government for just four weeks (Image: AFP via Getty Images)

Greg Hands is refusing to hand back a £7,920 taxpayer-funded severance payout he took despite getting a new job as a minister just weeks later.

The Tory Party Chairman received the generous windfall when he was sacked from his role at the Business Department in September 2022, where he’d served for just under a year. He was re-hired just four weeks later to be a minister in the Department for International Trade.

Ministers are entitled to receive severance payments worth a quarter of their salary on leaving office, provided they are not reappointed within three weeks.

Asked if Mr Hands would return the cash, his spokeswoman declined to comment.

Details of the payout emerged in the Business Department’s annual report. It also showed that Jacob Rees-Mogg pocketed £16,800 in severance pay for a job he held for seven weeks, after arguing civil servants should have their redundancy money slashed. The former Business Secretary, who now trousers more than £750 an hour as a presenter on GB News on top of his £86,000 MPs salary, was entitled to claim three months salary on leaving government when Liz Truss quit as PM.

Teachers, civil servants and train drivers walk out in biggest strike in decade

But in his previous role as Government Efficiency Minister he unveiled plans to cut the amount of redundancy pay for departing civil servants by a quarter - from four weeks' salary per year of service to three. A consultancy document produced under his direction said changes to redundancy payments would “create significant savings on the current cost of exits”.

A Labour source said: “It is hard to know who is the bigger hypocrite for accepting these handouts: Jacob Rees-Mogg, who said the severance pay of civil servants was too generous; or Greg Hands, who is constantly preaching that the Tories are the party of sound money. They are both as bad as each other, and they deserve a permanent redundancy notice from the British people."

Mr Hands was appointed as Conservative Party Chairman in February after Nadhim Zahawi stood down in a tax row. After the Tories lost formerly safe seats in Tamworth and Mid Bedfordshire, Mr Hands is facing questions about his performance. Asked on Friday whether he would consider his position as Party Chair in light of the defeats, he replied: "No."

John Stevens