Dave walks away with a £20,000 golden goodbye

DAVID Cameron chose to pocket a taxpayer-funded golden goodbye worth nearly £20,000 when he walked out of Downing Street, the Mail can reveal.

The millionaire former prime minister took the tax-free ministerial payoff when he quit after losing the EU referendum, Whitehall sources said.

It is left up to departing PMs to decide whether or not to take the public money – and he did so, while also handing out bumper payoffs to his aides and cronies.

Details of the sum emerged after Mr Cameron announced on Monday he was quitting as an MP. They will compound concerns over his use of public money in his final days in office. It follows revelations he showered his advisers with severance deals to which they were not legally entitled.

In his last days in No10, Mr Cameron over- ruled civil servants to increase the already generous exit payments for his political staff by a third, pushing the total cost to more than £1million.

Many of the beneficiaries were then handed gongs or peerages in his much- criticised resignation honours list, including spin chief Sir Craig Oliver.

Last night a friend of Mr Cameron said: ‘ He is not a money-grubbing man. He passed a law which stopped him getting a huge pension from the day he left office.

Tony Blair got half his salary from the day he left Downing Street. Instead he [Mr Cameron] received three months’ redundancy.’

Mr Cameron is said to be focusing on his memoirs, for which he is expected to secure a seven-figure advance. Tony Blair was reportedly paid £4.6million for his.

Mr Cameron’s lump sum payoff was calculated at one quarter of his ministerial salary.

It is thought his will come to £17,125, one quarter of the £68,500 he received for being PM as of April 2016. He was also paid £74,962 to be an MP. Mr Cameron could have also claimed a full non- contributory prime ministerial pension which would have paid him £80,000 a year immediately upon leaving office.

However, he waived this entitlement to claim a package similar to that of other ministers. Like them, he received the immediate payout and will then get a ministerial pension when he hits 65.

And like all departing MPs, Mr Cameron can also claim £40,000 by way of relocation allowance expenses, to pay for removals and staff costs as he winds down his parliamentary office.