Second jobs

In the last parliamentary session alone, 42 Conservative MPs earned over a million pounds between them in second jobs that face being banned in the House of Commons. Exclusive New Statesman analysis of earnings by MPs in the governing party over six months from 1 May to 31 October finds a total of £1,088,036 earned from political consultancy or similar advisory roles that Boris Johnson wants to prohibit. Following a protracted and painful row over former minister and then-Tory MP Owen Paterson breaching Commons' rules while doing consultancy work, the Prime Minister spooked his backbenchers by tweeting on 16 November to propose that “MPs are banned from acting as paid political consultants or lobbyists”. In a letter sent that same day to Lindsay Hoyle, the Speaker of the House of Commons, Johnson wrote that no MP should be paid to “act as political or parliamentary consultants or advisers”. MPs voted on 17 November to prohibit parliamentary advice or consultancy work. It will be up to the Committee on Standards to report on the details of such a ban. If there were a ban on political and parliamentary consultancy work, and similar advisory or board director roles, it would have meant Tory MPs being over £1m worse-off altogether over the past six months: !function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",(function(e){if(void 0!==e.data["datawrapper-height"]){var t=document.querySelectorAll("iframe");for(var a in e.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var r=0;r