NHS gives £1m payoff to couple then rehires them Karen Straughair, 50, was handed £605,000 when her trust was wound up Just weeks later, both were given senior roles at Leeds Teaching Hospitals By Sophie Borland and Christian Gysin A husband and wife were handed a combined NHS redundancy pay-off of nearly £1million before walking straight into new jobs in the health service. They are among dozens of health bosses who have received lucrative taxpayer-funded exit packages despite being rehired a few weeks later. Karen Straughair, 50, was paid £610,000 in March when the organisation where she was chief executive - NHS South of Tyne and Wear - was abolished as part of the Government's health reforms. Her husband Chris Reed, 57, was handed around £350,000 at the same time when NHS North of Tyne, which like his wife's organisation helped manage three NHS trusts, was also axed. In June, both were appointed into senior positions at Leeds Teaching Hospitals - Mr Reed as the interim chief executive and his wife as the recovery director. Their current salaries are not known but Mr Reed was formerly on £180,000 while his wife earned £170,000. The couple, who live in a £500,000 home in the historic village of Brancepeth just outside Durham, are unlikely to be earning significantly less in their new packages. The redundancy figures, which were revealed in NHS accounts published this week, showed that the highest payout was awarded to Sir Neil McKay, former chief executive of NHS Midlands and East, who was handed £1.1million. Yesterday David Cameron's spokesman said: "The Prime Minister is very clear that we need to show more restraint in senior managers" pay. If these people are returning to the NHS then we should be clawing back some of the money. Jonathan Isaby, from the TaxPayers" Alliance, said: "Taxpayers will be appalled that some of these golden goodbyes ran into six figures - especially for individuals who have walked straight through a revolving door into another highly paid public sector job." Labour's health spokesman Andy Burnham described the payments as a "scandalous abuse of precious NHS resources," adding: The sheer scale of waste is breathtaking. 'Why on earth weren't staff who were retained by the NHS transferred to the new organisations instead of given huge pay-offs? These revelations leave David Cameron with serious questions to answer about both the conduct of this re-organisation and its cost. In March, hundreds of Primary Care Trusts and regional Strategic Health Authorities were abolished and replaced by GP-led Clinical Commissioning Groups. NHS staff whose jobs were axed were handed redundancy packages and their combined pay-offs have cost the taxpayer over £1.4billion. But NHS rules say these staff can be taken back on by the health service as long as they wait a month before starting their new jobs. Dr Dan Poulter, Tory health minister, said: "Dismantling Labour's bloated bureaucracy left us with a big bill because their ridiculously lax redundancy rules tied our hands. We have overhauled their system to make sure this can never happen again. Angry: Shadow Health Secretary Andy Burnham blasted the 'scandalous abuse of precious resources'