How much severance pay will Liz Truss get after she resigned as prime minister?

While no one would doubt that Liz Truss has certainly had a somewhat stressful job to do as prime minister, many would challenge whether she deserves to be financially rewarded for crashing the pound, causing mortgage rates to rise and performing more U-turns than someone failing their driving test.

But the UK’s shortest serving prime minister will still receive severance pay to the tune of £18,860 – £419.11 for each day she served in the top job – according to independent fact checkers Full Fact. 

This is also, roughly, a year’s salary for someone aged 23 earning the national minimum wage (also called national living wage). 

The prime minister resigned on Thursday October 20, after the House of Commons descended into chaos the night before when a Labour motion to ban fracking sparked confusion over whether the vote could actually be about confidence in the government.

With a blank expression, Truss told the nation that she could not deliver the mandate on which she was elected as prime minister and Tory leader, and had notified King Charles that she was resigning.

People holding paid positions in government and the opposition are entitled to severance pay of a quarter of their salary when they leave their job.

And this is, of course, on top of her PM salary – of which she has received just one pay cheque  – of £79,936. This is on top of her basic MP’s salary of £84,144, which she will continue to earn as she returns to the backbenches. 

So in sum, with a severance pay out of £18,860 plus 1.5 months’ salary as PM at roughly £6,781.50, Truss has earned £25,600 for spending 45 days as the British prime minister.

And just incase she spends it all at once, the ex-prime minister will be entitled to claim up to £115,000 per year from the taxpayer for the rest of her life. The Public Duty Costs Allowance (PDCA) is a pot of money that former prime ministers can claim expenses from to cover the cost of continuing to fulfil public duties.

It is also worth noting that Truss spent a week longer campaigning to be prime minister – 53 days – than she did doing the job. She received £425,000 in personal donations to boost her Conservative leadership bid.

This additional cost to the public purse comes on top of the £18,860 also paid out to Boris Johnson when he handed in his resignation letter to the Queen in July, and the multiple payouts issued to the cohort of ministers who resigned during the chaos in the weeks prior.