Should MPs have second jobs?

Parliament’s standards watchdog is said to be considering a ban on MPs taking second jobs as political consultants following the Owen Paterson sleaze scandal.

An emergency debate on standards will take place in the House of Commons today after Boris Johnson performed a “screeching U-turn” on efforts to halt Paterson’s suspension for breaking lobbying rules, said The Sun.

Over the weekend, Environment Secretary George Eustice admitted that the government had “made a mistake” in trying to get the suspension re-examined by a new Tory-majority committee. But he downplayed the fallout, telling Trevor Phillips on Sky News it was a “storm in a teacup”.

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Instead of defusing the row, Eustice “put rocket boosters under it”, said The Sunday Times political editor Caroline Wheeler on the broadcaster’s Press Preview show last night.

Now the PM is “battling” to contain the backlash, said the i newspaper on its front page today.

‘Lucrative side-hustles must end’

One issue that stood out from last week’s “farce”, wrote i columnist Ian Birrell, is “the extraordinary concept that MPs can openly take cash from outsiders seeking influence”.

Paterson “will soon be political history”, having resigned his North Shropshire seat last week, maintaining that he did not break the rules. Yet the case has “shone a spotlight on something that stinks, since he is far from alone in exploiting his parliamentary position, even though direct lobbying is theoretically banned”, said Birrell.

He concludes that parliamentarians “picking up lucrative side-hustles must end now”.

Parliamentarians net £6m

MPs are paid a basic salary of £81,932, but openDemocracy last week revealed that they had earned at least £6m between them from second jobs since the start of the pandemic.

Former shadow Cabinet Office minister Jon Trickett called for a ban on MPs holding second jobs, saying: “It should be a full-time job to effectively represent 75,000 constituents and one that does not allow time to represent other paid interests.”

His Labour colleague Richard Burgon is planning to bring a bill to ban second jobs “except in some very limited circumstances”.

Their former leader Jeremy Corbyn made a similar pledge in the party’s 2019 manifesto, leaving room for only “limited exemptions to maintain professional registrations like nursing”. Keir Starmer is expected to clarify the latest party position in the Commons today.

Burgon told openDemocracy: “It’s totally wrong that some MPs are lining their pockets by moonlighting in other roles and it is sickening that this was being done during a public health crisis.”

‘Second jobs... and second jobs’

International Trade Secretary Anne-Marie Trevelyan told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme this morning that she would “never” want to see a ban on second jobs overall. “I think we would lose hugely from that,” she said.

But Trevelyan said it would be “wise” to rethink certain kinds of consultancy roles.

“There are second jobs… and second jobs,” agreed The Mirror’s editorial board. Paterson pocketed £112,000 a year on top of his MP salary working for two commercial outfits, it said, while Labour’s Rosena Allin-Khan also has another job: “as a hospital doctor saving the lives of Covid patients in her free time”.

“That should make it clear, Mr Johnson, which extra jobs are acceptable and which are not,” said the newspaper.

The wrong problem

The Times, however, thinks the “machinery governing MPs’ outside financial interests has been tested and, in the main, works well”.

What is true for medical doctors like Allin-Khan also applies to MPs in a range of professions, including law, teaching and journalism, argued the paper. “It is a benefit, not a failing, for MPs to continue outside activities for which they have training and skills,” it said. Banning these would lead to a narrower pool of parliamentary candidates.

The problem in the Paterson case “was not that he had a job outside the House, but that he used his office to advance commercial interests”.

The paper concluded: “The scandalous fiasco of the prime minister’s attempt to protect his friend risks giving unwarranted credibility to attempts to tighten the system further.”