Rishi Sunak and the Conservative Party.

[MikeWM]

As above, government hire in outsourcers rather than doing it themselves. It’s always more expensive.

One may argue that we have a similar issue with one of my particular irritants, housing benefit. Which is basically taking money from everyone and putting it in the pocket of mostly very rich people to pay off their second/fifth/fiftieth mortgages, simply because government housing policy has been so poor over the last 40 years or so.

Though as I was saying above, this is another thing I don't expect Labour to improve either. After all, how many new council houses were built under Blair/Brown?

 

[Yew]

Outsourcing causes these issues. Paying someone else to do something is always more expensive than doing it yourself.

Generally this is because public sector salaries are simply not competitive for the specialist skills they need - the definition of a false economy.

 

[The Ham]

Generally this is because public sector salaries are simply not competitive for the specialist skills they need - the definition of a false economy.

Whilst it can be possible to use outside companies and reduce costs (for example if there's something which requires a lot more people for a short time, which you can then share across other public sector organisations), more often than not such savings happened in the early days of such a change in working practice. Now it just results in extra costs.

 

[takno]

Agreed. I do think that some tax issue might need addressing (particularly around evasion and avoidance) and perhaps some taxes may need to rise but in general terms I think you make a very valid point around why the heck everything is now seemingly unaffordable. To speak simplistically overall government expenditure is higher than ever and yet it seems like we're getting worse and worse public services for the money. What on earth has gone wrong?

Per capita spending is lower, added to which almost record amounts of it is being used to pay for an unsustainable level of debt built up during Covid, and during the 10 years before which the government spent killing any signs of growth in the economy and then destroying any hope for the future with Brexit.

We really need to stop pretending to be a top-tier country - it's become embarrassing at this point.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

Outsourcing causes these issues. Paying someone else to do something is always more expensive than doing it yourself.

That sounds very simplistic - blaming one single thing - and a bit of a stretch to imagine that outsourcing would make such a dramatic difference by itself, even if it's possible it's made a marginal difference.

There are probably a number of contributing factors to why it's so hard for the Government to afford stuff, but one little-discussed thing that stands out for me is how the standards we expect have become so much higher and regulations so much tighter over the last few decades. To take a couple of examples:

• Railways: Think how much better modern rolling stock is compared to what was around in the 1980s. Could you imagine, for example, a TOC getting some new pacer-quality units built! Add in all the modern safety systems, and so on...
• Education: We now seem to expect it's a normal thing that classes will have a teacher and one, maybe more, teaching assistants. When I was at school in the 1970s/80s, classes were about the same size as today, but teaching assistants were something we'd never even heard of in any school I attended: It was expected that having a teacher was sufficient (though I see on Googling teaching assistants did exist in some places). Going back to the 1950s, class sizes were typically bigger: 35-40, but still with just one teacher. Similarly, today we have huge expectations about schools providing special assistance to children who are in any way different from the norm, which largely didn't exist 30-40 years ago.
• Justice (the area @Ainsworth highlighted): The police and the justice system now appear to be subject to considerable scrutiny over how they treat different groups in our society, in a way that didn't happen a few decades ago and will certainly be adding layers of bureaucracy. There's much more of a culture amongst the population (and amongst people likely to be arrested) of 'knowing my rights', which means the police/etc. inevitably need to be more careful about following rules and documenting everything they do.

I suspect that if you look at almost any public service on a timescale of decades, you'll find the same kind of thing happening.

To be clear, I'm not saying that any of this is necessarily a bad thing: There are obvious reasons why having those higher standards today is beneficial. But we tend to forget that also carries a financial cost, and will often mean, for example, we need more people today to do the same thing than would have been required a few decades ago. It is inevitable that will impact what level of service the Government can provide for a given level of taxation: As a general principle, if you want something to be better, that probably means you won't be able to afford as much of whatever that something is.

Oh and of course - the other big thing is the ballooning proportion of public expenditure that goes on healthcare, driven by growing expectations of what healthcare the state should provide plus the growing proportion of people who are in very poor health.

It would be astonishing if those kinds of things weren't making a huge contribution to why everything seems so expensive these days.

 

[yorksrob]

https://hansard.parliament.uk/commo...ribution-BA867D9A-D260-4EB6-B142-F7B11521D1AB


Good call on digging out the quote. But 'my priority' does not necessarily mean 'my only priority'. It indicates that it is a (possibly, of several) priority. In fact, it's the 5th of 5 pledges that Rishi Sunak laid out back in January, which indicates that it is one of 5 priorities: (link)

He clearly puts it as a greater priority than getting the trains running properly as public transport doesn't get mentioned as a priority

 

[Tetchytyke]

Though as I was saying above, this is another thing I don't expect Labour to improve either. After all, how many new council houses were built under Blair/Brown?

Absolutely. Social housing fell by a lot under New Labour because they just carried on the same policies as before: right to buy and forcing councils to transfer stock to housing associations, who have higher construction costs (this is why “council houses” weren’t built under New Labour, but housing associations didn’t/couldn’t pick up the slack).

Justice (the area @Ainsworth highlighted): The police and the justice system now appear to be subject to considerable scrutiny over how they treat different groups in our society, in a way that didn't happen a few decades ago and will certainly be adding layers of bureaucracy. There's much more of a culture amongst the population (and amongst people likely to be arrested) of 'knowing my rights', which means the police/etc. inevitably need to be more careful about following rules and documenting everything they do.

Police numbers have been cut, CPS numbers have been cut, court staff numbers have been cut, criminal defence solicitors haven’t had a pay rise since the 90s. The problems facing the justice system have nothing to do with “woke”, and everything to do with austerity. Police aren’t wasting their time on Twitter disputes, the reason why they don’t come to your burglary is because there aren’t enough of them.

There’s a really good book on this by someone called The Secret Barrister.

Railways: Think how much better modern rolling stock is compared to what was around in the 1980s. Could you imagine, for example, a TOC getting some new pacer-quality units built!

And think how much money was given to the ROSCOs for hiring trains that had already been bought and paid for. Those pacers were costing £150k a year in rent.

And still is- those 150s don’t come cheap.

With new trains, hiring through a ROSCO is more expensive overall than buying outright. The Government could borrow the capital more cheaply than the ROSCOs, and we wouldn’t be paying the ROSCOs’ profit margin, and once the capital outlay had been repaid we’d have an asset that wouldn’t cost a penny. Instead we pay the ROSCOs’ capital outlay in leases and, at the end of it, they still have the asset.

Lease-and-maintain contracts perhaps do make more sense, as the government is purchasing a full package.

As for the current TOCs, they’re all on management contracts yet the DfT tell them how to do everything. As I said, they’ve bought a dog yet bark themselves.

Healthcare I largely agree with you. The issue is that new drugs are staggeringly expensive, some cancer drugs can cost over a million quid a go, and modern medicine means people will survive things they’d have died of even 20 years ago. I don’t think people are truly any less healthy than in the past (call centre staff may be obese, but miners all had COPD), but people aren’t dying of stuff they would have before.

Of course the outsourcing adds costs too. My wife’s old NHS trust had to compete for a contract for mental health provision. They lost the contract to a private supplier, who then promptly handed the contract back after six months as they weren’t making any money. All that money- two lots of contractor procurement, the contractee’s costs, the TUPE costs, all down the drain. You’re probably talking ten million quid- perhaps not a lot, but it buys a lot of nurses.

And let’s not talk about PFI.

That sounds very simplistic - blaming one single thing - and a bit of a stretch to imagine that outsourcing would make such a dramatic difference by itself, even if it's possible it's made a marginal difference.

It’s all the way through government though. They closed the Civil Service Fast Stream, but spent half a billion on consultancy services for Brexit, and another half a billion on consultancy services for Covid. Serco’s profit margin is about 4.5%, primarily on government contracts.

It’s not the only issue, and it’s simplistic to say it is. But bring Serco services back in house and you save the thick end of 5%, not to be sniffed at given how much they supply.

 

[GusB]

Of course the outsourcing adds costs too. My wife’s old NHS trust had to compete for a contract for mental health provision. They lost the contract to a private supplier, who then promptly handed the contract back after six months as they weren’t making any money. All that money- two lots of contractor procurement, the contractee’s costs, the TUPE costs, all down the drain. You’re probably talking ten million quid- perhaps not a lot, but it buys a lot of nurses.

Outsourcing is one issue that is fairly close to my heart as I've worked "for" various organisations without ever actually being employed by them. There are several problems:

• An employee of the outsourced organisation can become quite competent and can gain knowledge of all the various processes of the "parent" organisation, but quite often they're not trusted enough to make certain decisions and are unable to resolve any queries on the first contact.
• Skills and knowledge gained by an employee are lost if an organisation decides to pass the contract onto another third party. The whole training process has to begin again and while this is going on, the overall service suffers. If there is an interim period where one contractor is kept on while the new one gets up to speed, there's absolutely no incentive for staff on the old contract to provide any meaningful service if they know they're going to be losing their jobs - TUPE is not always an option.
• In-house staff often look down upon outsourced colleagues, especially if they know that their own jobs will go eventually. There's no incentive for them to provide any assistance or share any knowledge.
• Outsourcing providers will often do the minimum required for the amount of money available, which often means that their employees are unable to provide the service that they'd like to provide (eg, follow-up calls). Performance targets result in customer enquiries not being logged properly within the short time window available, leading to repeat enquiries with all the frustration that goes with it and, ultimately, lost business.

My experience is from call-centre environments and I've never had to deal with anything that's life-critical, but it's easy to see how penny-pinching here and there could easy impact on safety.

This reliance on "the market" to deal with public services is perhaps good on paper, but in practice it's extremely wasteful. What you end up with is a load of "meta-money" being spent on the mechanics of winning contracts, rather than being spent on providing the actual service!

 

[Tetchytyke]

Outsourcing providers will often do the minimum required for the amount of money available, which often means that their employees are unable to provide the service that they'd like to provide (eg, follow-up calls). Performance targets result in customer enquiries not being logged properly within the short time window available, leading to repeat enquiries with all the frustration that goes with it and, ultimately, lost business.

Absolutely.

My experience is at a major university in London. IT support was in house, and then it was outsourced. When it was in-house, the staff would always happily do the extra little bits- “whilst you’re here…”. This wasn’t always recorded, obviously.

Of course under the terms of the outsourcing, every task had to have a separate ticket, all billed separately. The university’s management were at a loss to explain why the outsourcing actually cost them money, rather than saving it.

Similar applied when they outsourced catering, to the extent we started going to Pret for meeting catering because it was significantly cheaper.

I’ve been on the other side of the fence working for a big consulting/outsourcing firm. It was nice there was enough money in the budget for the managers take the entire team I was on to the most expensive cocktail bar in Newcastle for “team building” on the company credit card, but I’m not sure the client would be happy knowing they bought me and everyone else £150 each of food and booze…

 

[SuspectUsual]

I watched some of the debate on the immigration bill yesterday evening. Despite a few Tories speaking on opposition to the bill (but of course not voting against it) the majority of contributions from the government benches were the usual “leftie woke lawyer” nonsense and the likes of Scott Benton claiming “hundreds of millions” were poised to seek asylum in the UK and being allowed to go unchallenged.

Its thoroughly depressing that people like this can get into Parliament and behaviour like this is tolerated

 

[nw1]

• Railways: Think how much better modern rolling stock is compared to what was around in the 1980s. Could you imagine, for example, a TOC getting some new pacer-quality units built! Add in all the modern safety systems, and so on..

Is it better though? All rolling stock was new once.

Pacers were not the only new stock in the 80s. 442s were introduced in the 80s. And then there were 317s, 455s, 319s, 321s, 150s, 156s. 158s were 90s, but only just, and could probably be considered as arising from the same "late BR" era. Those all were surely fine for the services they served. Some were regarded as pretty high-tech in their day. Some criticise the above classes now, but only because they are now old. They weren't always! And HSTs were mid-late 70s, so not a million miles from the 80s.

And the mid-life stock in the 80s, introduced in the late 60s or early 70s (CIGs, VEPs, Mk-II stock, etc) were absolutely fine for the services they operated.

As someone who used the railways in the 80s pretty much continuously from autumn 1982, I'd argue that 80s rail was actually considerably better to what we have now (post-Covid) - particularly in the NSE years of the mid-late 80s. More reliable, less overcrowded, and spare stock was available to operate decent peak extra services (whether that be commuter peak or holiday peak).

This is not supposed to be a nationalisation vs. privatisation comment, by the way - even though I would personally favour nationalisation. I would argue that the late-90s railway was also considerably better than what we have now.

 

[yorksrob]

Is it better though? All rolling stock was new once.

Pacers were not the only new stock in the 80s. 442s were introduced in the 80s. And then there were 317s, 455s, 319s, 321s, 150s, 156s. 158s were 90s, but only just. Those all were surely fine for the services they served. Some criticise the above classes now, but only because they are now old. They weren't always! And HSTs were mid-late 70s, so not a million miles from the 80s.

And the mid-life stock in the 80s, introduced in the late 60s or early 70s (CIGs, VEPs, Mk-II stock, etc) were absolutely fine for the services they operated.

As someone who used the railways in the 80s pretty much continuously from autumn 1982, I'd argue that 80s rail was actually considerably better to what we have now (post-Covid) - particularly in the NSE years of the mid-late 80s.

Indeed. One would expect rolling stock design to develop over time, however in recent years, comfort seems to have featured less in the design specification.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Absolutely.

My experience is at a major university in London. IT support was in house, and then it was outsourced. When it was in-house, the staff would always happily do the extra little bits- “whilst you’re here…”. This wasn’t always recorded, obviously.

Of course under the terms of the outsourcing, every task had to have a separate ticket, all billed separately. The university’s management were at a loss to explain why the outsourcing actually cost them money, rather than saving it.

Similar applied when they outsourced catering, to the extent we started going to Pret for meeting catering because it was significantly cheaper.

I’ve been on the other side of the fence working for a big consulting/outsourcing firm. It was nice there was enough money in the budget for the managers take the entire team I was on to the most expensive cocktail bar in Newcastle for “team building” on the company credit card, but I’m not sure the client would be happy knowing they bought me and everyone else £150 each of food and booze…

My observation in IT is that certainly bigger firms are moving away from "lock, stock and barrel" outsourcing of everything into being more strategic about it and outsourcing things involving hard-to-get or expensive skills, or things needed short term, but keeping long term basics like the helpdesk in house.

Outsourcing won't save money on the basics for most large companies as you've got economies of scale already.

 

[nw1]

I watched some of the debate on the immigration bill yesterday evening. Despite a few Tories speaking on opposition to the bill (but of course not voting against it) the majority of contributions from the government benches were the usual “leftie woke lawyer” nonsense and the likes of Scott Benton claiming “hundreds of millions” were poised to seek asylum in the UK and being allowed to go unchallenged.

Its thoroughly depressing that people like this can get into Parliament and behaviour like this is tolerated

Are some of these MPs trying to channel Enoch Powell? The attitude and language of some of the parliamentary Tory Party (not all, I should clarify) sounds not that dissimilar to his.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

Is it better though? All rolling stock was new once.

Pacers were not the only new stock in the 80s. 442s were introduced in the 80s. And then there were 317s, 455s, 319s, 321s, 150s, 156s. 158s were 90s, but only just, and could probably be considered as arising from the same "late BR" era. Those all were surely fine for the services they served. Some were regarded as pretty high-tech in their day. Some criticise the above classes now, but only because they are now old. They weren't always! And HSTs were mid-late 70s, so not a million miles from the 80s.

It's not just because they are old. Pacers were basically rubbish even when they were new, but that was because there was no money and they were cheap to build. Cheap meant BR could build a lot of them - in contrast to today when everything is specced [1] really highly, with the result that rolling stock today is eye-wateringly expensive to build, hence we order the minimum we can get away with, which then contributes to the frequent shortages of stock that you alluded to.

[1] I know seats today are often uncomfortable and too thin and we can always quibble about aspects of the internal design and the horror of longitudinal seating etc. By highly specced, I'm talking about the carriages themselves: The crash-worthiness, all the electronics that goes into them, etc.

Yes I realise Pacers are an extreme example, and as you say other stock built in the 1970s and 80s wasn't as bad. But I'd still argue that, even built as new, most of that stock was built to a far lower spec than we would routinely expect today - which provides an example of how things are so much more expensive today in part because we demand much higher standards today.

 

[Tetchytyke]

Yes I realise Pacers are an extreme example, and as you say other stock built in the 1970s and 80s wasn't as bad. But I'd still argue that, even built as new, most of that stock was built to a far lower spec than we would routinely expect today - which provides an example of how things are so much more expensive today in part because we demand much higher standards today.

I’m not sure the spec levels have changed that much, though. I wouldn’t say a Northern 195 was specced any more highly than a 158 or, air conditioning aside, even a 156. The 331s are probably lower spec than the 333s they’ve partially replaced.

The bizarre situation is that new trains weren’t actually more expensive- due to low interest rates they were cheaper than or as cheap as hiring the old ones. We saw that at turbospeed with the SWR 707s, but the same situation applied to much of the new stock. The ROSCOs were charging so much it was cheaper to buy new.

The old ones, of course, had already been bought and paid for before they were outsourced to the ROSCOs for buttons. So perhaps we wouldn’t have perfectly good 321s and 365s going for scrap if they’d been kept as a fully depreciated asset.

 

[dosxuk]

Indeed. One would expect rolling stock design to develop over time, however in recent years, comfort seems to have featured less in the design specification.

I'm not sure I could agree that the comfort on an as-spec 140, complete with doors that don't shut, constant squealing from the non-bogied wheelsets and wonderful bus seats, is higher than the as-spec 196 which have replaced them.

 

[yorksrob]

I'm not sure I could agree that the comfort on an as-spec 140, complete with doors that don't shut, constant squealing from the non-bogied wheelsets and wonderful bus seats, is higher than the as-spec 196 which have replaced them.

I'm not sure I could agree that the seating on an Azuma is better than on an IC125. We could play this game a long time.

 

[Typhoon]

I watched some of the debate on the immigration bill yesterday evening. Despite a few Tories speaking on opposition to the bill (but of course not voting against it) the majority of contributions from the government benches were the usual “leftie woke lawyer” nonsense and the likes of Scott Benton claiming “hundreds of millions” were poised to seek asylum in the UK and being allowed to go unchallenged.

That is quite a common strategy for those on the government side opposed to legislation (it was never going to be tight). Abstain and seek to amend in the Committee and Report stages.

I think it is worth noting the names of some of those who spoke against the legislation: Theresa May, Robert Buckland, Chris Skidmore, Simon Hoare, Caroline Nokes.

It is worth noting that abstaining (by not recording a vote) does not necessarily mean that an MP opposes the bill, for example the member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip failed to vote .... again!

 

[nw1]

So it appears that Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson will stand again in Uxbridge:

Boris Johnson reselected as candidate for Uxbridge and South Ruislip

There had been speculation the former PM might try to find a safer seat before the next election.

www.bbc.co.uk

The question is, why? There must be at least an even chance of losing the seat; why did he not stand in say Reigate or Mid Bedfordshire, safe Tory seats where the (notorious) incumbents are standing down?

Does he have more arrogance than sense? (Rhetorical question).

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 17 Mar 2023 ==

That is quite a common strategy for those on the government side opposed to legislation (it was never going to be tight). Abstain and seek to amend in the Committee and Report stages.

I think it is worth noting the names of some of those who spoke against the legislation: Theresa May, Robert Buckland, Chris Skidmore, Simon Hoare, Caroline Nokes.

It is worth noting that abstaining (by not recording a vote) does not necessarily mean that an MP opposes the bill, for example the member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip failed to vote .... again!

Some interesting other names in the abstentions. Priti Patel, Kwasi Kwarteng, Peter Bone, Chris Heaton-Harris, and Andrea Jenkyns are all people I'd have expected to support. And, conversely, I would have expected David Lammy to oppose. Patel now only the 313th most right-wing MP in Parliament?

Bizarrely also, both Sunak and Starmer also abstained. Not sure if this is some kind of unwritten rule coming into play.

From, "Illegal Migration Bill: Second Reading" at parliament.uk: see

https://votes.parliament.uk/Votes/Commons/Division/1497#notrecorded

 

[Typhoon]

So it appears that Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson will stand again in Uxbridge:

The question is, why? There must be at least an even chance of losing the seat; why did he not stand in say Reigate or Mid Bedfordshire, safe Tory seats where the (notorious) incumbents are standing down?

Maybe he sounded out other constituencies but they insisted that, if selected, he would need to turn up for work?

 

[Gloster]

Could it be a mixture of arrogance and too much faff to go round and seek the nomination in another constituency? He has more lucrative things to do than nurse a new constituency to avoid a late challenge and deselection.

 

[MikeWM]

Bizarrely also, both Sunak and Starmer also abstained. Not sure if this is some kind of unwritten rule coming into play.

As I understand it, conventionally the PM and the LOTO are paired, reflecting the fact that often one or the other, or both, are likely to have commitments elsewhere.

 

[Typhoon]

Some interesting other names in the abstentions. Priti Patel, Kwasi Kwarteng, Peter Bone, Chris Heaton-Harris, and Andrea Jenkyns are all people I'd have expected to support. And, conversely, I would have expected David Lammy to oppose. Patel now only the 313th most right-wing MP in Parliament?

Bizarrely also, both Sunak and Starmer also abstained. Not sure if this is some kind of unwritten rule coming into play.

From, "Illegal Migration Bill: Second Reading" at parliament.uk: see

https://votes.parliament.uk/Votes/Commons/Division/1497#notrecorded

Lammy was in discussion with Democratic Senators (and Bernie Sanders) as well as international organisations in Washington on 15th March (it says 'to be joined by Peter Kyle')

Heaton-Harris, as Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, is probably too busy trying to sweet talk the DUP, who are sulking because they can't get their way.

Patel is an interesting case - she hasn't voted for almost two months. Too busy with the Conservative Democratic Organisation?

 

[brad465]

So it appears that Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson will stand again in Uxbridge:

Boris Johnson reselected as candidate for Uxbridge and South Ruislip

There had been speculation the former PM might try to find a safer seat before the next election.

www.bbc.co.uk

The question is, why? There must be at least an even chance of losing the seat; why did he not stand in say Reigate or Mid Bedfordshire, safe Tory seats where the (notorious) incumbents are standing down?

Maybe he sounded out other constituencies but they insisted that, if selected, he would need to turn up for work?

What has to be remembered also is if the Privileges Committee find Johnson guilty of misleading Parliament and recommend a lengthy suspension, he is almost certain to face a recall petition and a by-election would result before any GE takes place.

 

[edwin_m]

I don't think being selected as a GE candidate prevents him walking away if he gets a better offer from elsewhere - after all, this is Johnson we're talking about...

 

[Typhoon]

I don't think being selected as a GE candidate prevents him walking away if he gets a better offer from elsewhere - after all, this is Johnson we're talking about...

All the while he has a (potential) seat, his dream of the great comeback is a possibility. If he had declined, his supporters may start drifting to alternatives (except Nad, of course). And, as you say, if there was a comeback he might be persuaded (reluctantly, of course, to look for somewhere safer.

 

[sprunt]

He probably doesn't actually want to carry on being an MP, and I've got a vague idea that you get a bigger pay-off if you lose an election than if you simply stand down, so it makes sense to him to stand somewhere he probably won't win.

 

[Typhoon]

He probably doesn't actually want to carry on being an MP, and I've got a vague idea that you get a bigger pay-off if you lose an election than if you simply stand down, so it makes sense to him to stand somewhere he probably won't win.

MP’s who lost their seats in the election have today found themselves very publicly out of a job.

But they will not go out of pocket.

According to the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority, the expenses watchdog, departing MPs are entitled to a resettlement allowance, equivalent to a month’s salary for each year of service, capped at 6 months, or £33,500.

Those MPs who lost their seats receive their salary up to and including polling day.

But the Loss of Office payment goes to MPs who had been in office for at least two years and is equal to double an MP’s statutory redundancy entitlement, which takes into account age, weekly pay and the number of years in the job.

This means many of the election’s most prominent losses are due to be paid thousands of pounds after losing.

As an example, an MP on the £74,000 salary, who has been in office for 12 years and is over the age of 50, is likely to get around £17,100 as their Loss of Office payment.

They are also able to claim a winding up allowance of up to £57,000 for former London MPs, and up to £53,000 for those who represented a constituency outside of the capital.

This is for such costs as terminating staff contracts, ending leases on offices, and furniture removals.

This allowance is open to all MPs and is not related to length of service.

Warning: this is from the 2019 election. An MP's salary is now £84, 144.

As regards being an MP, he hasn't actually been one (in practice) for some time, he just draws the salary. I do think he still wants to be PM though but only because it gives him status. He will relish the campaigning, too!

Quote from https://metro.co.uk/2019/12/13/much-will-paid-mps-lost-seats-11879931/

 

[Gloster]

MPs who stand for re-election at a general election but failed to be re-elected are entitled to Loss of Office Payments, which are calculated as twice the minimum statutory redundancy figure. They can only be claimed by those who have been MPs for two years or more. Ministers may in certain circumstances be entitled to additional sums. I think that there were problems after the last election as the sums are not paid until all matters resulting from the loss of the job are sorted out and this took an inordinate time to sort out, with some MPs having to pay out large sums and then waiting years to be paid back. (I know MPs are regarded as overpaid, but these really were very large sums in some cases.)