CULTURE Secretary Michelle Donelan has revealed she rejected the £17,000 pay-off she received for being Education Secretary for just 36 hours.

The MP for Chippenham was the shortest-serving cabinet member in British history, her two-day tenure being shorter than Earl Temple's four-day tenure as Foreign Secretary.

Following reports she would receive severance pay at Secretary of State level despite her short tenure, Miss Donelan pledged to donate any such payment in full to a local charity but has now disclosed that she rejected the pay-off.

Speaking to Kay Burley on Sky News, the MP for Chippenham said that she had rejected the pay-off because it was taxpayers' money.

“I said that if I wasn’t able to reject the money I would give it to a charity but I rejected it.

“It was taxpayers' money so I think it would be wrong for me to take taxpayers' money and then decide which charity I wanted to give it to so I was very clear that if I was able to reject it, then I would reject it, so I did,” said the now-Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport.

Pressed about being Education Secretary for just 36 hours, Miss Donelan, 38, said she had served in the Cabinet for ten months and had worked in the Department for Education in different roles for three years prior to being promoted by Boris Johnson in the dying hours of his tenure as Prime Minister.

On July 5, in the wake of a large number of resignations over Boris Johnson's handling of the Chris Pincher scandal, Miss Donelan was promoted to Secretary of State for Education after the previous Secretary, Nadhim Zahawi, was appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer.

She served as Education Secretary for just 36 hours from July 5-7 before resigning alongside 50 of her colleagues, writing that Johnson had "put us in an impossible position".

In her resignation later, she said she had "pleaded" with the Prime Minister on Wednesday to "do the right thing and resign for the sake of our country and our party".

But she now believed the "only way" to remove him from power was for cabinet to "force your hand".

Miss Donelan was replaced by James Cleverly, who served out the remainder of Mr Johnson's term, before he was promoted to serve as Liz Truss's foreign secretary.

Kit Malthouse is now education secretary.