Having said civil servants should have their redundancy pay slashed by a quarter
Tory MP Jacob Rees-Mogg has been branded a hypocrite after it was revealed he walked away with £16,800 in severance pay for his role as Business Secretary which lasted just 7 weeks.
No less because Rees-Mogg had previously called for civil servants to have their redundancy pay slashed by a quarter, after claiming it was too generous during his role as Government Efficiency Minister.
This was coming from the multi-millionaire MP who was reported as the top earner of MPs with second jobs in July this year, as he rakes in £750 an hour for presenting his GB News show, on top of his MP salary of £80,000.
There was outrage over the hypocrisy of his severance pay which came to light on Sunday, with the Trades Union Congress pointing out the contradiction with the infamous picture of Rees-Mogg lying down and appearing to take a nap in Parliament.
Under the current system, Rees-Mogg was entitled to claim three months’ salary on leaving the government after the end of Liz Truss’s short-lived, car-crash period as Prime Minster.
The X account, BladeoftheSun wrote: “After being Business Secretary for 7 weeks under Liz Truss and seeing the economy’s worth drop by £500bn a record, and debt grow by £74bn another record.
“Jacob Rees-Mogg took £17,000 in redundancy pay. Liz Truss also collected her £125,000 for life. Rewarded for failure.”
Whilst Labour Councillor Freddie Bailey wrote on X: “One rule for them, and another rule for the rest of us”.
The True & Fair Party which calls for radical reform in politics responded by saying they would end severance pay for sacked ministers as well as introduce policies to end MPs hosting media shows or appearing on celebrity shows, and second jobs.
It was revealed Tory chairman Greg Hands also accepted a £7,920 payout in September 2022, after being sacked from the Business Department where he worked for just under a year, and was then re-hired four weeks later.
Under the current system ministers can receive severance pay worth a quarter of their salary on leaving office, if they are not reappointed within three weeks.
Hannah Davenport is trade union reporter at Left Foot Forward, focusing on trade unions and environmental issues
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