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Liz truss, the shortest-serving Britain Prime Minister, will be able to claim expenses of up to Pound Sterling 115,000 ($129,000) a year for the rest of her life. Truss who quit her post as PM just 45 days into the job, is entitled to receive payments under the Public Duty Costs Allowance (PDCA). It is a government-regulated programme introduced in 1990 to “assist former Prime Ministers still active in public life”.
The allowance reimburses former prime ministers for office and secretarial costs arising from their public duties. According to the UK government website, “Payments are made only to meet the actual cost of continuing to fulfill public duties”.
All former Prime Ministers are eligible to draw on the PDCA in the UK. The PDCA has been capped at Pound Sterling 115,000 a year since 2011 and is reviewed annually by the sitting prime minister. Former leaders are also entitled to claim an allowance toward their staff pension costs, which is limited to 10% of the PDCA.
From 2020 to 2021, former prime ministers Theresa May, David Cameron, Gordon Brown, Tony Blair, and John Major were all reimbursed by varying amounts.
However, Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer has called on Truss not to claim the allowance. He said Truss had “not earned the right” to the allowance.
Former Britan PMs have not always claimed the full amount and it is not paid automatically. The ex-prime ministers have to provide receipts.
Ex-British PM David Cameron claimed £113,423 and Theresa May claimed £57,382.
Truss took office last month with hopes and promises of reinvigorating the British economy and putting it on the path to long-term success. It didn’t go to plan.
Instead, Truss’ tenure was scarred by turmoil as her economic policies threatened the country’s financial stability, driving the pound to record lows, sparking chaos on bond markets, and increasing mortgage costs for millions of people.
Though Truss took office amid a cost-of-living crisis, the war in Ukraine and the lingering effects of the Covid-19 pandemic, her decision to announce 105 billion pounds ($116 billion) of tax cuts and spending increases without providing details on how she would pay for it unnerved investors, who warned of soaring public debt.
That undermined confidence in the government’s ability to pay its bills and raised questions about the economic credentials of a new prime minister who took office after a deeply divisive contest for leadership of the governing Conservative Party.
The disarray surrounding the economic plan weakened Truss’s authority as prime minister, and ultimately led to her decision to resign.
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