There were no fewer than 28 settlement agreements made across government, at a cost of more than £1.96m, in 2022-23.

The figure was given in a delayed Public Services Commission annual report which has now been published and which recommends that there should be a legislative cap on such pay-outs.

Settlement agreements can be made for a range of reasons including voluntary redundancy, compulsory redundancy and severance payments, and the Mutually Agreed Resignation Scheme (MARS). They need to be signed off by the accounting officer in each department or statutory board.

Kate Lord-Brennan, who was chair of the PSC during the time covered by the newly-published annual report, had said during her tenure that the use of these types of arrangement was being reviewed to ensure they are only used in exceptional circumstances.

The report, which is for the period April 2021 to the end of March 2023, reveals that there were seven settlement agreements in 2021-22, with a total value of £285,088, but the following year this had jumped to 28, at a total cost of £1,965,582.

A Freedom of Information request published last year showed that there were 47 settlement agreements in 2017-18 at a cost of £1.84m, 49 in 2018-19 at cost of £1.78m, then 44 in 2019-20 to a value of £2.44m and 33 in 2020-21 to the value of £1.23m.

It gave a different figure than the PSC report for 2021-22 with 15 at a cost of £514,722, while for 2022-23 it said there were 27 with a total cost of £1.97m.

But it does reveal that the highest cost of settlements in 2022-23 related to the Cabinet Office at £1,194,148 and the Department of Health and Social Care at £244,738.

This was a year which saw a number of high-profile departures from the public service including the chief secretary Will Greenhow.

Among a list of requirements outlined in the recently-released report, the PSC says Treasury regulations /authorisation of settlement agreements should be introduced ‘to provide similar oversight and controls to the UK’ and a ‘legislative cap’ on such settlements should be considered by government.

Delays in publishing the PSC annual reports for the last three years were the subject of a tense exchange in Tynwald in December.

Former PSC chair Ms Lord-Brennan accused Lawrie Hooper of having been a ‘Minister of Double Standards’ when he pressed for the release of the documents.

A combined report for the years 2021-22 and 2022-23 was published on the Tynwald website on December 17.

In it, Ms Lord-Brennan said the need to reformat and get better value from any PSC reporting was part of the reason for the delay in its production.