£860,000 pay-off after 14 months: where your tax money went

The man who ran the Civil Service for just over a year walked away with a pay-off of nearly £860,000. Lord Wormald left his post as cabinet secretary in February by what was called mutual agreement, after months of reports that Downing Street was unhappy with him, and 14 months after the then prime minister Sir Keir Starmer had appointed him to the job.

The Cabinet Office accounts set out the sum in two parts. There was £332,897 described as contractual compensation, and a further £526,598 listed as additional severance. Together that comes to just under £860,000, a record for a departure of this kind.

The accounts also show what he was paid while still in post. His salary for the period from 1 April 2025 to 13 February was between £210,000 and £215,000. Added to the severance, his total for that year came to more than £1m.

According to the BBC, the size of the package was partly down to his pension. Being removed from office cut short a long Civil Service career, and a note in the accounts states that he chose to take early payment of his pension. Most of the severance money was used so that he could draw the full value his pension would have been worth at normal retirement age, instead of a reduced amount for taking it early.

He was also compensated for a mandatory waiting period after leaving government. As cabinet secretary he had regular access to sensitive material on national security, foreign policy and the economy, which restricts what a person in that position can do next.

The accounts state that Sir Keir authorised the special severance package on 16 February. The Cabinet Office said it does not comment on HR matters, but added that its permanent secretary received a ministerial direction from the then prime minister to proceed with the payment, and that the exchange of letters between them is a matter of public record.

Conservative shadow Cabinet Office minister Alex Burghart said Lord Wormald was one of many civil servants and advisers fired by Sir Keir as he tried to save his own skin, and called the payout an appalling waste of taxpayers' money by Labour. The FDA union, which represents senior civil servants, took a different view at the time, criticising anonymous briefings against him and describing his treatment as a new low for the government's relationship with the Civil Service.

Lord Wormald is now the shortest serving cabinet secretary in the history of the post. He was given a seat in the House of Lords in one of Sir Keir's final acts as prime minister, will sit as an independent crossbench peer, and is due to formally take his seat on Thursday.

For anyone who has looked at taking their own pension early, the detail in those accounts will sting. Draw yours before retirement age and the amount is cut, and nobody writes a cheque to make up the difference. At the top of Whitehall the difference was covered in full, signed off by the prime minister, and paid for out of general taxation.