Osborne’s father-in-law was paid £24k for “unsalaried” ministerial role

According to the Mail on Sunday:

“A Tory Minister is returning £24,000 to the taxpayer after being mistakenly paid for a Government job he was supposed to be doing for free. In an extraordinary blunder, Lord Howell – who is Chancellor George Osborne’s father-in-law – was paid about £3,000 a month despite being an ‘unsalaried’ Foreign Office Minister.”

I’m sure that there’s a perfectly rational explanation for someone being paid £24,000 for an unpaid role (although personally I think it would have taken me less than 8 months to notice the money) – but this is the Chancellor’s father-in-law. Can you imagine if this had happened to Gordon Brown? It would have been on the front page of every paper.

You’d have been able to seen the indignation and outrage from space…