David Cameron has got himself a new job, working as an adviser for a financial transactions company. But he needn’t worry about the salary. Because while he starts this new gig, he’ll still be getting up to £115,000 a year from the public purse.
Bringing home the bacon
Cameron will sit on the advisory board of the First Data Corporation. The company describes itself as:
a global leader in commerce-enabling technology, serving approximately six million business locations and 4,000 financial institutions in more than 100 countries around the world. The company’s… securing and processing more than 2,800 transactions per second and $2.2 trillion per year.
Big business, no doubt. But while Cameron earns an undisclosed amount from his first private sector role, we – the taxpayer – are still forking out for him.
Cameron: still troughing it
As The Canary previously reported, accounts from Theresa May’s Cabinet Office revealed that it paid [pdf, p89] Cameron £50,227 in 2016/17. The accounts say [pdf, p89] this is to:
assist former Prime Ministers, still active in public life. Payments are made only to meet the actual cost of continuing to fulfil public duties. The costs are a reimbursement of incurred expenses for necessary office costs and secretarial costs arising from their special position in public life.
The allowance has a limit of £115,000 a year for the lifetime of the former PMs. Because Cameron only began [pdf, p89] getting this benefit from 14 July 2016, he hasn’t claimed the full annual amount. But in future years, he will be able to.
Cameron’s new job, and six-figure expense account funded by the public, comes on top of an £800,000 book deal he signed for his ‘memoirs’. And as The Financial Times reported [paywall], he charges up to £120,000 an hour for speeches.
This little piggy…
The Guardian reported that the government’s Advisory Committee on Business Appointments (Acoba) noted in a letter to Cameron:
You stated the role is not likely to include contact with government, you have no commercially sensitive information about First Data or its competitors and you did not have previous official dealings with First Data.
The Guardian continues:
Given Cameron’s former position, Acoba asked the Cabinet Office Permanent Secretary, John Manzoni, about the role. Manzoni confirmed that the government had no links with First Data…
It seems that, while the rest of the UK still suffers the ill effects of years of grinding austerity, the man in charge of relentless cuts to benefits and public services is sitting pretty. As is often the case, the Tories are laughing all the way to the bank; funded, in part, at our expense.
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