Ministerial severance pay

Who qualifies for ministerial severance pay?

Generally, a lump sum, equivalent of one quarter of the annual ministerial salary, is payable when a minister stops holding office.

Departing ministers who are over 65 and anyone who is reappointed as a minister within three weeks do not qualify for severance pay.

Full details are set out in section 4 of the Ministerial and other Pensions and Salaries Act 1991.

Details of severance payments made to former ministers are recorded in the respective departmental annual accounts.

The table below reports the severance pay Commons Ministers are entitled to.

Ministers can waive severance payments. From 13 October 2025, the Ministerial Code has stated that ministers who leave office after serving less than six months; or who have “committed a serious breach of the Ministerial Code” are expected to waive their entitlement to severance payments. Former ministers who breach the Business Appointment Rules will be expected to repay their full severance payment.

Ministerial salaries and severance payments (£s)

Post

Salary

Severance payment

Prime Minister

75,440

18,860

Cabinet Minister

67,505

16,876

Minister of State

31,680

7,920

Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State

22,375

5,594

Source (ministerial salary data): Cabinet Office, Salaries of members of His Majesty’s Government: April 2022, Updated 15 December 2022

Note: this is the most recently available published information, although on 25 September 2025, the government confirmed that “The Prime Minister has maintained the pay freeze for ministers who continue to claim a lower salary to their entitlement under law, as per the salary amounts listed on GOV.uk”.

Changes to ministerial severance payments, 2025

On 29 July 2024, in a statement on “Public Spending: Inheritance”, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rachel Reeves said she would review the arrangements for ministerial severance payments.

On 21 July 2025, in a written statement, Pat McFadden, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, announced the conclusions of the review. No changes to the legislation were announced but “the Prime Minister is introducing reforms to ensure severance payments are proportionate and fair”:

• Ministers who serve fewer than six months will be expected to forgo severance pay.
• Ministers reappointed to another paid ministerial post within three months will be expected to forgo their salary until the full three-month period has elapsed, avoiding simultaneous receipt of salary and severance.
• Ministers who leave office due to “a serious breach of the Ministerial Code” or who are found to have seriously breached business appointment rules will be expected to forgo or repay their severance pay. The Prime Minister will remain responsible for deciding if a minister has breached the Ministerial Code or the business appointment rules, on the advice of the Independent Adviser on Ministerial Standards.

In a further written statement on 13 October 2025, Nick Thomas-Symonds, the Paymaster General and Minister for the Cabinet Office, said that the Prime Minister had re-issued the Ministerial Code “to implement reforms in relation to ministerial severance payments and changes to the operation of the Business Appointment Rules”.

The revised Ministerial Code (October 2025) included two new paragraphs in chapter 1 (Ministers of the Crown), on severance payments:

1.14. Ministers are expected to waive, on appointment, entitlement to a ministerial severance payment upon leaving office if they have served less than six months, or where they have committed a serious breach of the Ministerial Code, resulting in their departure (see 2.8). Equally, if a former minister is found by the Prime Minister to have seriously breached the Business Appointment Rules they will be expected to repay their full severance payment.

1.15. Where a former minister is appointed to a ministerial office within three months of leaving office they will be expected to forgo their salary for the period overlapping with the severance payment period.

Nick Thomas-Symonds confirmed that “the reforms took effect from 13 October 2025 with waivers issued accordingly”.

On 1 December 2025, he confirmed that all ministers eligible for a severance payment had signed waivers. By signing the waiver, they agreed to forgo or repay severance payments as set out in the written statement of 21 July 2025.

Other office holders who qualify for severance payments

Section 4 of the Ministerial and other Pensions and Salaries Act 1991 also provides that the following office holders qualify for a severance payment when they stop holding office:

• Speaker of the Houses of Commons
• three Deputy Speakers in the House of Commons
• the Lord Speaker
• the Senior Deputy Speaker (formally the Chairman of Committees) in the House of Lords
• the Principal Deputy Chairman of Committees in the House of Lords.
• Introduction of severance payments for Commons ministers

Severance pay for Commons ministers was introduced in 1991, following recommendations from the Top Salaries Review Body (TSRB) in 1988.

Severance pay for Lords ministers had already been introduced following a review by the TSRB in 1983. The Parliamentary Pensions etc Act 1984 provided that

Ministers and other paid office holders in the Lords are eligible for severance pay equal to three months of final salary providing they have not reached the age of 65 and have held ministerial office for at least two years.

Anyone reappointed to a ministerial position within three weeks did not qualify either.

In 1988, in its report Review of Aspects of the Parliamentary Pension Scheme and Other Matters, the TSRB recommended that the severance payment scheme for Lords ministers should be extended to other ministers and paid office holders. It recommended that it should no longer be a condition that a minister had served for two years before qualifying for the payment. The age restriction and the three-week re-appointment conditions were retained.

The Ministerial and other Pensions and Salaries Bill 1990-91 was debated at second reading in the House of Commons on 31 January 1991. It was considered in Committee of the whole House and received a third reading on 18 February 1991.

Changes to the scheme

When the Ministerial and other Pensions and Salaries Act 1991 was passed, the Prime Minister, the Lord Chancellor and the Speaker of the House of Commons were not entitled to a severance payment. At the time, their pension arrangements were different from other ministers. The Public Service Pensions Act 2013 brought their pensions into line with other ministerial pensions and severance arrangements were extended to them.

In 2006, with the creation of a separate role of Lord Speaker (formerly, the Lord Chancellor was also Lord Speaker), the Lord Speaker was added to the list of offices who qualified for a severance payment.

The Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010 (CRAG) defined the salary payable to a Commons Deputy Speaker that qualified for a severance payment. It also made changes to reflect that MPs’ pay was no longer determined by resolution of the House of Commons. Under the CRAG Act, this function was transferred to the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (IPSA).

Pressure for changes in the 2019 Parliament

In the 2019 Parliament, there was an unusually high turnover of ministers. Three Prime Ministers held office and, when they took office, many ministers were replaced. With one very short tenure and several ministers only holding office between the announcement of Boris Johnson’s resignation and Liz Truss taking office, many ministers held office for relatively short periods of time.

These prompted questions about the way section 4 of the Ministerial and other Pensions and Salaries Act 1991 operated (for example, PQ33763, 15 July 2022; PQ53506, 3 October 2022).

On several occasions in November 2022, the government said it had “no current plans” to amend the 1991 Act (for example, PQ73160, 3 November 2022; PQ77624, 8 November 2022).

In February 2024, Shadow Attorney General, Emily Thornberry presented a private member’s bill the Ministerial Severance (Reform) Bill, although it was not printed.

The Labour Party used an Opposition Day on 6 February 2024 to hold a debate on reforming ministerial severance arrangements. It outlined the changes it proposed, and its motion made provision for parliamentary time to be made available to debate the bill. Its motion was defeated by 192 votes to 275.

The Labour Party motion (which was not passed by the House of Commons ) called for the following changes to the Ministerial and other Pensions and Salaries Act:

(i) departing Ministers who have not attained the age of 65 receive an amount equal to one-quarter of their earnings over the previous 12 months as a Minister, minus any period covered by a previous severance entitlement, where that is lower than an amount equal to one-quarter of the annual salary paid to that Minister before their departure;

(ii) any person who returns to ministerial office after three weeks but within the period equivalent to the number of days of salary that they were paid in severance must return the corresponding amount of their severance payment;

(iii) no person departing ministerial office while under investigation for allegations of gross misconduct or breaching the ministerial code will be entitled to a severance payment unless and until they are cleared of those allegations by the relevant authority.