Labour vows to reform ministerial severance pay after Tories handed £1m last year

Individuals deemed unfit for office still walked away with payments from taxpayers, says shadow Cabinet Office minister

Labour has pledged to reform the rules surrounding ministerial redundancy payments after it emerged that the high turnover of cabinet ministers under the past three prime ministers generated a severance bill worth more than 930,000 in the last financial year.

Since 1991, sacked ministers under the age of 65 have been 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. The receive the payments irrespective of how long they have stayed in their latest post, or the circumstances under which they left.