THE Home Secretary will examine stopping disgraced police officers from receiving golden handshakes after it emerged that a former chief constable of North Yorkshire would be given a £247,000 payoff after admitting gross misconduct.

House of Commons Leader Sir George Young said he and Theresa May would discuss changing Police Regulations which require chief police officers whose fixed-term appointments come to an end, or where they are required to resign or retire, before they reach 30 years’ service.

The pledge followed Ripon MP Julian Smith expressing outrage in the Commons that Grahame Maxwell was legally entitled to receive 85 per cent of the difference between his actual pension and the pension he would have received on completing 30 years’ service.

Mr Smith said: “The taxpayers of North Yorkshire will find this figure shocking.

I have written to the Policing Minister Nick Herbert and I am meeting with him to make the case that never again will a chief officer guilty of gross misconduct be able to take these ridiculous sums of money.

“As part of the Government’s excellent policing reforms, we should have a new rule that if a police chief gets found guilty of gross misconduct, he should be kicked out and receive no money.”

Mr Maxwell left his £133,000 post at North Yorkshire Police on Tuesday, after last year admitting to helping a relative avoid an oversubscribed hotline when applying for a job at the force.

The relative did not get the job, but the Independent Police Complaints Commission accused the police chief of an unacceptable attempt to discredit the investigation – which cost taxpayers £300,000 – into the case.

Mr Maxwell is understood to be the first chief constable to have used the regulation to receive compensation for not having his contract renewed.

Jeremy Holderness, chief executive of North Yorkshire Police Authority, said he wanted the public to understand his organisation had “absolutely no discretion”

over handing Mr Maxwell the compensation.

He said the incoming police and crime commissioners, who will have the power to remove chief constables, would also be unable to stop the payments unless the Government changed the regulations.

He said: “Most conditions of service of police officers are determined through national agreement and, once agreed, are enshrined in statute and this requirement is no exception.”