Wow!! Nearly 1000 signatures now. Thank you to everyone who has signed as you've really helped to push this forwards. 

If I could ask you all to push even more though? If all of us could get just 10 other people to sign then we stand a chance of getting this seen by parliament which could go a long way to getting the outcome we'd all like to see which is the money (both the £15,000 settlement and also whatever extra legal costs were undertaken) paid back by Mrs Donelan. That is as far as we the UK tax payer are concerned the only right thing to have happen here. 

Some information that you may or may not already know about all of this. May be a TLDR this!! (too long don't read!). 

I've been reading a lot about this over the past couple of days and it has now come to my attention that Mrs Donelan was actually given some legal advice BEFORE posting what she did on her personal X.com account. 

The government won't disclose what that advice was but I'd like to assume that it wasn't :

"Yeah go ahead and post it, not a problem!"

One would presume and hope that some warning was given about the possible outcome from posting such a strong claim. 

I think just about ever law abiding citizen here in the UK even without a massive legal team behind them (that is paid for of course by the UK tax payer!) would know that posting such a claim online could very easily open them up to a libel claim. Why then an MP working for government and the legal team wouldn't have foreseen this is quite frankly disturbing. Plain common sense is really all that was needed here. 

Too many people nowadays just hit submit on whatever it is they want to post without first thinking of the consequences that posting the content may have. If people would just take a second before hitting submit to think to themselves is this the right thing to do, am I definitely 100% right in what I'm saying, what damage might this do to the other person then a lot of these problems could very easily be avoided. 

Mrs Donelan did no due diligence at all before posting what it now appears were thoughts from a dossier made by some Westminster based researchers and advisers. 

Due to her posting her libellous remarks on her personal X.com account this was out in the open for everyone to see. 

She not only could have very easily damaged the reputations of the two academics that she made her remarks about but due to the extreme nature she very well could have put them at danger.

As it stands both Prof Sang and Dr Patel (the two academics accused by Mrs Donelan) were placed under investigation by the UK Research & Innovation (UKRI) because of a letter Mrs Donelan had sent to them suggesting that Prof Sang and Dr Patel had shared extremist material or had expressed sympathy or support for Hamas. She also claimed they had breached the Nolan Principles (Selflessness, Integrity, Objectivity, Accountability, Openness, Honesty and Leadership) and suggested they should be removed from the board. 

Prof Sang and Dr Patel were put under investigation for months due to this and it was found that they were not sympathisers at all and they had not shared anything extremist and that they also had not breached the Nolan Principles. 

Prof Sang had this to say :

"I am delighted that this matter has now concluded, but very disturbed by the way in which Michelle Donelan and UKRI behaved. Had they asked me at the start, I would have explained the true position. Instead, Michelle Donelan made a cheap political point at my expense and caused serious damage to my reputation. I propose to donate part of the damages she has paid to a charity."

Mrs Donelan didn't even bother to get in touch with Prof Sang before posting what she did and all her worries could have been put aside had she had the common sense to think to do that. 

How the legal advice given to her couldn't have possibly mentioned this (we unfortunately are not privy to what that advice was) is unfathomable. 

Mrs Donelan after having her claims proven false issued a statement and in part of that she said :

"As I said to the media at the time, and I want to reiterate now: I have never thought or claimed that Professor Sang, or any member of the Board, committed a criminal offence."

Previously in her statement though she says this :

"I suggested she was expressing sympathy and support for Hamas."

Hamas is a proscribed organisation and as such it is illegal in the UK to support them. She may not have directly said it in such words but 'support for Hamas' would be a criminal offence. 

As a person working for the government she should know this and again surely any legal advice given to her would of hopefully made her aware of this. If not then who exactly is giving this legal advice as they're obviously not worth the money they're making if they didn't even know this!

For some reason Mrs Donelan's department felt after she had posted what she did to her personal X.com account that they were liable for the things said. Why they thought this we're not sure though the fact that her personal account states on it she is a member of parliament may go some way to why they thought this. 

This however is still her own personal account and most companies actually state that their company name should never be linked to a personal account due to reasons such as what has transpired here. 

One thing which we keep on hearing from different people in the government is that they decided to pay the settlement in order to prevent the matter from going any further in the courts and so as to limit the amount of settlement (and legal fees) that the tax payer would have to pay. 

That's all well and good however the UK taxpayers do not feel they should be paying this in the first place! This was stated on her own personal account AFTER being given legal advice and so this should have been a civil matter between her and the claimants. 

If this was all to be cleared up quickly then Mrs Donelan very well could have done so herself. It's not like she doesn't make enough money in order to be able to do so!!

She was also defended by Penny Mordaunt who said that it was clear that Mrs Donelan valued public money as she once turned down a redundancy payment of around £16,876 for being Secretary of State for Education for just two days!! Two days!!!

Yep that's right, certain ministers and other people in government are entitled to severance pay equal to a quarter of their salary!!

I am totally shocked that this is even a thing!!

Redundancy pay is one thing but nearly £17,000 for 2 days work!!

Yes she didn't take the money but the very fact that it is even possible to get that kind of severance pay after just 2 days of work shows just how out of touch the government are with their constituents. 

You hear the phrase out of touch with the people however how anyone can even think that is right shows just how out of touch with reality they are!!

I wonder how many ministers or other government workers have worked a short time and then received a quarter of their salary as redundancy? We may never know!!

Anyway Penny Morduant would like us to think that as she didn't take this severance pay then that somehow means that we the tax payer should therefore fork out the same sort of money for her libel case!

We do NOT think that at all! We should NOT be paying this. 

How many other people who work in the public sector (think Police, Fire, Ambulance etc) could make such libellous remarks and then seem to think that their company will stand behind them and cough up the money for their libel cases??

This isn't even a company paying but the government which is funded by the UK tax payer. 

That is NOT a use of our money that we agree with at all. 

We therefore demand that Mrs Donelan pay back every penny of the £15,000 (and any legal fees which were also paid) that was used to settle this claim. 

It is then up to the government as to what action, if any, should be taken against Mrs Donelan and her tenure as a member of parliament though I know there have been calls from numerous people in parliament for her resignation. 

On a sidenote it came to my attention while reading through quite literally hundreds of Tweets (or whatever they're called now!) last night that there have been other members of parliament who have tried to appropriate public funds to help them out of tight spots. Some have tried to use tax payer money to settle speeding fines and parking tickets however I do believe that any which did get approved were then paid back after. 

This just brings to question two things though. One being, how could that kind of expenditure ever be approved in the first place and secondly I'm now wondering what else government appointed persons have put through their expenses and very possibly had approved which shouldn't have been!?

We very well may never find out but none of it sits well with anyone who has a modicum of decency.