Angela Rayner not returning her 17K severance payment

[MissionCreep]

After a year out of gov Angela Rayner is back obviously and today saying she won’t return the 17K severance payment because she ‘will deliver again’ in government. Just seems so grubby.

Same for Liz Truss taking the PM pension after crashing the economy. Just so tone deaf. I’m sure there are loads of other examples and I don’t think they’re OK either.

I don’t want this Burnham government to appear to be one that just looks out for itself. That was terrible for us in the Boris Johnson era. We should obviously not be harbouring any corruption from those in office, but also I want politicians to do the right thing in office even where the law doesn’t absolutely force them to.

Why should she? The zillions of Tories in the same boat never did. She’s contractually entitled to it.

If you were made redundant by your company and received a pay off, went away and did something else for a year, then applied for a role in your old company and were successful, would you repay you redundancy payment @MissionCreep ?

I’m not a Rayner fan but after a year this is a stupid non issue

Agreed

Interesting that you have chosen two women to complain about instead of all the men it applies to…

Exactly that. It’s a ridiculous thing to try and shit stir about.

Entirely predictable tha people will go for her on this though, she is hated because she is a woman and working class

Yeah and she criticised them for that. The grubby little hypocrite.

No surprise there. She has always been on the take.

Did she? Any handy links?

She criticised the Tory front benchers who were out for a matter of weeks then back in. She has been out for nearly a year. It is not comparable. There is a fairly balanced write up on the BBC news website

Paragraph 4...

BBC News - Rayner rules out repaying severance cash after making cabinet return
www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx27mg0erd3o

Seeing as how she criticised others for keeping theirs, yes I think she ought to have repaid it. The bbc reported it as about 16k, I’m sure she can afford that. Such an easy ‘win’ as well after the house buying stuff too.

There’s a big difference between £16k and £450k. I’m inclined to agree with her.

Gove received a severance payment in July 2022. Did he repay it when he was reappointed in October 2022 I wonder?

Yes the hypocrisy isn’t great.

Happens all the time in the public sector. People get made redundant, get a payout, then after a period of time rock back up again. I understand it’s legal but it stinks imo.

Yep. Let the undermining begin.

That's the least of her concerns. She's got to be squeaky clean now, as the press will be watching her every move.

She’d be better placed if she hadn’t called it out for others.

She's in a hugely precarious role, does not come from family money, and faces endless classism and misogyny.

I don't see why she should have to give it back when Tory MPs felt they needed their moat maintenance funded by the taxpayer

Happens in the private sector as well. A few years ago a project DH had been working on got closed down, got his redundancy payment and 8 weeks later was re-hired by the same company but on a different project.

She was only out of government because she created a situation that needed to be examined. She had not further consulted, as she had been recommended to do, so she was declared to have broken the ministerial code. So if you create a problem yourself you get a payout and you can be a minister again ... is that right?

Agree.

I can’t stand Raynor but there’s no grounds for her to pay it back.