Matt Hancock still claims a £94,000 salary and £200,000 expenses despite being fired from the Conservative Party in 2022.
Mr Hancock is entitled to claim expenses and be paid a salary as he is still an independent MP. His basic salary is currently £91,346, and he claimed £40,253 in 2023/24—though he claimed over £200,000 annually in previous years.
A post shared more than 2,500 times on X (formerly Twitter), and also shared on Facebook, claims that the former health secretary, Matt Hancock MP, is still claiming a salary and expenses despite being sacked from the Conservative Party in 2022.
The full post says: “Matt Hancock was fired from the Conservatives in 2022, but he is still claiming his £94k salary and £200k expenses. Including nearly £5,000 a month for rent.”
But this post is missing important context. While Mr Hancock lost the Conservative whip in 2022 for signing up to take part in the TV show I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here, he is still an MP and has stood as an independent ever since.
He has since said he would not stand as an MP at the next general election.
All elected MPs who take the oath of allegiance are entitled to the same salary and expenses regardless of what political party they belong to, though some MPs with extra responsibilities such as the Speaker of the House receive additional pay.
The post claims he earns £94,000, which is not quite accurate. The basic salary for MPs for the year beginning 1 April 2024 is £91,346.
Information from the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (IPSA), which decides MPs’ pay and regulates their business costs (commonly referred to as expenses), shows that in 2023/24 Mr Hancock claimed £40,253.46 in business costs.
This is much lower than the £200k claimed in the post on X. However, it is also far less than he claimed when he was a Conservative MP and senior government minister.
In 2022/23 he claimed £284,810, in 2021/22 £216,479 and £227,498 in 2020/21.
It’s important to identify false or misleading claims about politicians and the political process, because they can affect people’s opinions of individuals, parties or how they choose to vote.
Misinformation about MPs’ expenses is extremely common online, and we have checked many similar examples in the past.
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Image courtesy of UK Parliament |
This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as missing context because he is entitled to a salary and expenses as he is still an MP.
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