Liz Truss has been claiming from the £115,000-a-year public fund awarded to former prime ministers, new Cabinet Office accounts have revealed.
Despite only being in office for 49 days, the ex-Tory leader received £23,310 in her first five months out of office.
According to reports, she has continued to claim in the current financial year.
READ MORE: Unapologetic Liz Truss defends mini-budget
The Liberal Democrats’ Cabinet Office spokeswoman Christine Jardine urged Prime Minister Rishi Sunak to “do the right thing and stop Liz Truss from claiming taxpayers’ cash from the ex-PM fund”.
“It’s an outrage that while families struggle to pay their bills and put food on the table, Liz Truss profits from her own failure,” she said.
“If Liz Truss wants to cut tax she should lead by example and stop taking hardworking British taxpayers for a ride by claiming handouts.”
The Public Duty Cost Allowance affords former prime ministers up to £115,000 a year to cover office and secretarial costs arising from public duties.
Sir Tony Blair and Sir John Major were the only former leaders to claim the maximum amount in 2022/23, though Gordon Brown was close on £114,627.
Her office declined to comment.
READ MORE: Liz Truss to lecture Rishi Sunak on how to run the economy
The Cabinet Office accounts also detailed the total cost of Boris Johnson’s taxpayer-funded legal defence to the inquiry that found he lied to MPs over partygate.
The final cost was put at £263,079, in line with what the department had previously revealed.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel