Current status: Answered by Shona Robison on 20 August 2024
To ask the Scottish Government how many special advisers received severance packages in each of the last five years, and what the total value was of any such payments.
The terms of Special Adviser contracts of employment are reserved to the UK Government. Those contracts include a requirement that severance payments are made to special advisers where their employment is terminated in the circumstances where a First Minister demits office, or on the dissolution of Parliament prior to a Scottish Parliamentary election. The value of severance payment due is dependent on an individual’s length of service and range from the equivalent of 3 months’ pay up to a maximum of 6 months’ pay.However, payment of severance is subject to agreement that should an individual be reappointed as a special adviser, they will repay any severance pay less the amount of salary they would have been paid had they been employed during the period between the termination of the previous contract and re-appointment on a fresh contract. Therefore the amount of severance to be repaid upon reappointment varies depending on the length of time between termination of employment and later reappointment. The following table sets out for each of the last 5 years to July 2024, the net cost of severance payments once the approximate level of repayments received are taken into account for those who were reappointed:
| Period | No of SpAds receiving severance payments | Net cost of severance payments |
| July 2019 to June 2020 | 0 | £0.00 |
| July 2020 to June 2021 | 12 | £153,458 |
| July 2021 to June 2022 | 0 | £0.00 |
| July 2022 to June 2023 | 8 | £204,055 |
| July 2023 to June 2024 | 5 | £144,843 |