An MP’s salary of nearly £82,000 is generous at three times the average British pay packet, but going into politics still involves a hefty pay cut for some, and comes with public pressure to forego any annual rise you might be offered. Second jobs with no social value should be banned.īy all means, let there be a quid pro quo for this sacrifice. But it insults voters’ intelligence to pretend that taking five-figure sums to advise big companies – or even to knock out a few Daily Telegraph columns – is genuinely for the good of the nation. Work shadowing schemes for MPs, letting them step into the shoes of their constituents for a couple of weeks a year, could hugely enrich parliament’s understanding of the outside world too. The Commons too was better informed for members standing up and explaining exactly what they’d seen in A&E or (in the case of Labour’s Nadia Whittome) in care homes. Several medically trained MPs returned to the Covid wards or put in stints at vaccination clinics during the pandemic, and in doing so didn’t just benefit their patients. Sometimes it can be socially useful, as in the case of those MPs who are qualified doctors and nurses keeping up their registration by doing the odd hospital shift, or reservists in the armed forces. If a company really values an MP for their personal knowledge and skills, rather than for their ability to have a word in the right ear, then it can hire them a decent interval after they’ve left.Ī side hustle is not, of course, always a terrible thing for a politician. The Scottish and Welsh parliaments already forbid this particular kind of moonlighting, so why not Westminster? Ban dubious corporate gigs for politicians tomorrow, and before long it will seem bizarre that an arrangement so obviously open to abuse – under which MPs can work as consultants so long as they don’t actually lobby on behalf of their clients – was ever allowed. The only surprising thing about this week’s renewed demands for a ban on MPs taking second jobs as political consultants is that it took public outrage over Owen Paterson’s paid lobbying for the penny to drop. Even on the lowest rung of the ladder, being a good backbench MP is not the sort of job from which you clock off at 5pm sharp, let alone bunk off for an afternoon. A t the very highest level, it consumes every waking hour, sometimes to the point of wrecking marriages, lives and health.
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