Liz Truss can now claim $128,000 a year for life after serving as PM for just 44 days due to a special U.K. law — but it’s not a wage
Opposition leader Kier Starmer of the Labour Party joined calls for Truss to decline the payments, saying that her six-week stint in office should not make her eligible for the allowance.
For the chaotic 44 days Liz Truss spent in office, she is now eligible to collect an annual £115,000 ($128,000) allowance from the U.K. government for the rest of her life.
The money for Truss will come from the country’s Public Duty Costs Allowance scheme,
which allows anyone who served as Prime Minister, no matter the duration, to claim the payment to cover the costs arising from their “special position in public life.”
The scheme, established in 1991 in the wake of Margaret Thatcher’s resignation, is meant to assist an ex-Prime Minister if they are “still active in public life.”
“There is no way that she should be permitted to access the same £115,000 a year for life fund as her recent predecessors — all of whom served for well over two years,” said Christine Jardine, the spokeswoman for the Cabinet Office of the Liberal Democrats, in a statement.
“Truss’s legacy is an economic disaster — for which the Conservatives are making taxpayers foot the bill,” Ms. Jardine said, adding that the potential payout would leave “a bitter taste in the mouth of the millions of people struggling with spiraling bills and eye-watering mortgage rate rises thanks to the Conservatives’ economic mismanagement.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/20/world/europe/uk-allowance-liz-truss.html