by political editor Paul Francis

Former Kent MPs who stood down or were defeated at the election are in line for pay-offs totalling £442,000, a campaign group has estimated.

The Taxpayers’ Alliance has calculated the amounts that every one of the 218 MPs who have left the Commons will be able to claim under rules permitting the payment of resettlement grants.

In the case of the nine MPs from Kent who either quit or lost, the overall sum of their "golden good-byes" is £442,329 - an average of just under £50,000 each.

The grants are the equivalent of a redundancy payment and are offered to MPs to help them "adjust to a non-parliamentary life."

Under reforms of the expenses system, the payments are likely to be replaced with different arrangements that bring such grants into line with standard employment redundancy rights. However, no final decisions have been reached.

According to research by the Taxpayers’ Alliance, the nine Kent MPs will receive sums of between £32,383 and £64,766, the maximum allowed. The first £30,000 of these payments are tax free.

The amounts each former MP gets is determined by how long they have been a serving MP and their age when they stood down or lost.

The individual sums estimated are:

• Paul Clark, former Gillingham Labour MP: £47,279
• Steve Ladyman, former Thanet South Labour MP: £54,403
• Bob Marshall-Andrews, former Medway Labour MP: £47,279
• Gwyn Prosser, former Dover Labour MP: £43,393
• Dr Howard Stoate, former Dartford Labour MP: £54,403
• Jonathan Shaw, former Chatham and Aylesford MP: £32,383
• Derek Wyatt, former Sittingbourne and Sheppey Labour MP: £54,403
• Ann Widdecombe, former Maidstone and The Weald Conservative MP: £64,766
• Michael Howard, former Folkestone and Hythe MP: £44,020.

An official report into MPs’ expenses last year recommended that members who step down voluntarily should receive only eight weeks’ pay.

But the new Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (Ipsa) watchdog has not yet decided whether to reform the system in time for the next election.