JACOB Rees-Mogg earned nearly £17,000 for just seven weeks of work in Liz Truss’s government, it has been revealed.
Rees-Mogg was appointed Secretary of State for Business in September 2022.
But after Truss’s disastrous mini-budget and speedy resignation, the Tory MP quickly returned to the back benches after serving in the role for less than two months.
Yet despite previously hatching plans to cut the redundancy pay of civil servants from four weeks of salary per year of service to three, Rees-Mogg himself felt entitled to claim the full-three months salary of redundancy pay he was entitled to when he lost his job as a minister.
According to an investigation by The Mirror, in total he was handed £16,800 in taxpayer-funded severance pay.
The chairman on the Conservative Party Greg Hands also accepted £7920 in severance pay when he left his role in the business department – even though he served there for less than a year.
Ministers are entitled to a quarter of their salary in severance payments when they leave office.
They may only claim the money if they are not reappointed as a minister within three weeks of being sacked.
However, Hands was re-hired as a minister in the Department for International Trade four weeks after leaving and therefore claimed the full amount of redundancy cash.
He is refusing to hand back the money.
Of course, Rees-Mogg also earns upwards of £30,000 per month for his role as a GB News presenter on top of his £80,000 salary for being an MP.
It comes after a survey found that the cost-of-living crisis has led to children “sleeping on the floor” as families are left unable to afford beds amid high-costs for essentials such as heating and food.
Rees-Mogg recently received a knighthood for political and public service after appearing on Boris Johnson's resignation honours list.
