MPs make £17.1m from outside jobs since 2019

Britain’s MPs have earned £17.1m from work outside parliament since the 2019 election, it has emerged – with the vast majority made by Conservative MPs. Hannah White, of the Institute for Government said: “Is that transparency actually sufficient?” Labour MPs earned a total of £1.2m from second jobs and work outside parliament, with the Liberal Democrat MPs earning an extra £171,000 and SNP MPs’ taking in £149,000. But Hannah White, director of the Institute for Government think tank, said the changes are “pretty minimal”, adding: “There’s no real incentive on the ruling Conservative Party to push their MPs to change something like that.” Sir Keir Starmer said he wanted to see “stricter” rules to restrict second jobs – but defended Mr Lammy’s outside work, and insisted that he would have to forge cross-party agreement on changes. “Broadly speaking there’s a million miles from someone advising a company on strategy and someone writing a book.” Labour had previously said it wanted to ban second jobs with only “limited exemptions”, but Sir Keir suggested that his party, and the Commons, will have to work out what those exemptions would be. The more transparency the better so everybody can see what has been declared and ask whatever questions they want about it.” Tory health minister Maura Caulfield, asked about the huge sums earned by MPs, told Sky News: “I think the best judges of all this would be constituents and if constituents don’t feel that MPs are giving 100 per cent to their constituency, they’ve got the ballot box to make the ultimate decision.” She added: “I think the current prime minister is very, very clear – he expects every MP to give 100 per cent to their constituency, and it is possible to work full-time as an MP and to do other things.”