A top Corbyn ally received over £200,000 in redundancy payments and a loan to buy a house from the 10-member trade union he used to run, a report has found.
Ian Lavery, Labour MP and party chairman, received the generous pay-outs from the National Union of Mineworkers.
He was handed £147,000 in redundancy payments after he ceased to be the union’s chief – even though he walked straight into a well-paid job as an MP.
And he was given a £72,500 loan from the union’s benevolent fund to buy a house with his wife.
The union also splashed out nearly £40,000 on sending Mr Lavery away to official trips to India, Cuba and Australia.
The revelations sparked a number of complaints to the trade union regulator and calls for Jeremy Corbyn to condemn the actions.
The regulator’s probe into the complaints did not find the MP to have broken any rules.
Labour MP Ian Lavery, pictured in Parliament, received a generous pay-out from the NUM when he stepped down as general secretary – even though he walked straight into a well-paid job as an MP
But Alec Shelbrooke, Tory MP for Elmet and Rothwell, urged Mr Corbyn to condemn the payouts.
He told Mail Online: ‘I would call on Jeremy Corbyn to condemn this action as it is clearly against all his socialist principles.
‘Or is it a case of as in Animal Farm, all animals are equal but some are more equal than others?’
The once-powerful NUM used to wield immense political power, but after its crushing defeat in the miners strikes it has been left with just a small number of members.
Mr Lavery, who helped mastermind Labour’s election campaign, ran the NUM before he became MP for Wansbeck in 2010.
A report by the Certification Office for Trade Unions and Employers Associations shows he received a redundancy pay-out of some £147,424 after he left the union in 2010 – even though he stepped straight into a well-paid job as MP.
The regulator found that both the union and Mr Lavery were unable to ‘provide documentary evidence’ to show that a proper redundancy process was followed.
But the regulator decided no further investigation would be ordered into the redundancy payments.
It was accepted that the union had overpaid Mr Lavery £30,600 in redundancy money, according to the report.
Tory MP Alec Shelbrooke called for Jeremy Corbyn to condemn the payments (file pic)
Mr Lavery disputed £10,600 of it – and he volunteered to repay £15,000, the report continued.
In a separate complaint, the report found Mr Lavery received a generous loan of some £72,500 from the union’s Provident and Benevolent Fund to help him buy a home.
The loan was written off in 2007 and Mr Lavery ‘appears to have been a beneficiary of this arrangement’ the report finds.
Mr Lavery and his wife also got to keep £18,000 from an endowment policy taken out on the property.
The report states: ‘The union was not adequately able to explain why they should have taken full responsibility for the under performance of the endowment policy taken out by Mr and Mrs Lavery.
‘In particular, they were unable to explain why no attempts were made to seek compensation from the endowment provider.’
The report adds: ‘It is far from clear why the union should have made the arrangement with the Provident and Benevolent Fund to write off the whole of Mr and Mrs Lavery’s £72,5000 debt to them.’
It concludes that the MP and his wife ‘may have been over-compensated for the under-performance of the endowment policy’.
The claims relate to payments made between 1994 and 2007, and the investigators found that given the ‘historical’ nature of the allegation they decided not to pursue the matter.
Jeremy Corbyn, pictured addressing a meeting of European socialists in Brussels yesterday., has been urged to condemn the pay-outs
The report said many trade unions have bought homes for senior officials before, usually the union retains ownership of the property rather than handing over the deeds to the official and their family.
It adds: ‘The idea of a trade union purchasing in effect a share in its General Secretary’s home is a novel one’.
The report also said it is unable to say if the £40,000 cost of the foreign trips was ‘excessive’ or not.
The regulator did not find the MP to be at fault.
Mr Lavery said: ‘Under my stewardship, the union always complied with the rules and the certification officer signed off every year’s transactions.
‘As the certification officer’s report makes clear, no member of the union, past or present, has made a complaint about the financial affairs of the union.
He added: ‘This report should draw a line under almost two years of allegations and innuendo directed at me and my former colleagues.’
The Labour Party declined to comment.’