Should MPs, UK or French, have second jobs?

It seems to me that if you choose to serve your country in Parliament, you should be dedicated enough to jack in your previous job and agree not to take any other while you’re a elected member.

And if you’re doing your job as an elected member properly, you wouldn’t have time for another.

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I think it is tricky determining which is the 2nd (or 3rd) job - if being an MP earns £80k but a lobbyist earns £100k - to me this would suggest you are a, lobbyist first and an MP second or third.

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Totally disagree.
The last thing that is needed are full time professional politicians with no experience of the ‘real world’.

IMO, there should be a cap on the time spent on 2nd, 3rd jobs and also rules regarding attendance at the House of Commons and constituency surgeries.

Absolutey not. They need proper recompense for what should be a very time consuming & difficult job.
However, to counter the potential lack of real world experience I believe that elected representatives should serve for a limited time, after which they should have an equal period back in the real world before (maybe) returning.

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"The highest earner is Andrew Mitchell, the MP for Sutton Coldfield, who made £182,600 for 34.5 days’ work in a variety of financial advisory roles, with firms including Investec and EY.”

That must be pretty super financial advice (especially as he has no commercial financial experience). 5K a day, equivalent of £1.3M salary. The boys in Investec and EY will want value for money, what’s he really giving them?

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No. Expenses should be equal to what you or I would get when travelling for work.

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It’s difficult because several MP’s have qualifications that need renewing by undertaking work (nurses,doctors etc), do you give exemptions for them and ban every other MP from working away from Westminster?

Job-share MPs with job-share jobs? Most of the second things they do are not “real world” experience as they are usually sinecures. I agree they should have real world working experience, but either before and after being an MP or just part-time and share the MP role. It would be great to have job-shares on an election ticket……would make it more attractive for women with children too.

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I dont think it is difficult. My reasoning is if they choose to go down the MP path then they forego any qualifications that need renewing, until such times as they either get voted out or decide to resign. When they get their snouts out of the trough, then maybe they should have a dispensation to enable them to get back into their old professions. Having said that, there other professions whereby normal folks who leave or dont keep qualifications upto date, should have the same dispensations.

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His name on the board listings to fool the punters. In a company I worked for there were some names on the board listing that I had never seen in over 10 years of working there. when questioned, the big boss openly told me their names were there to cover regulatory issues. So the company paid a handsome retainer to have their name on the board.

A few of the current MP’s worked in hospitals during the first Covid wave, are you saying they shouldn’t have been able to do that?

Could well be but non executive directorships aren’t generally that lucrative. He’s not on the board of Investec and EY doesn’t have a board.

No, it’s the ones that got their pals hundreds of thousand pound contracts for dodgy PPE we’re interested :shushing_face:

That’s the thing John, if you ban MP’s from doing any other paid work then that has to include those that are doctors etc.

I was thinking about the genuine cases as well as the people like Paterson, though there are relatively few of the genuine ones.

But yes, perhaps it’s harsh but effectively they choose to change their profession for as long as they can get away with it (ie get re-elected). In order to have the same (entirely reasonable) rule for all, to protect the integrity of Parliament, the rule would need to be absolute.

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I don’t think so Tim. One of the exceptions that was mentioned somewhere would be certain professional categories. For example nurses that need to do so many hours to keep their professional qualifications current or doctors once they limit activities to the NHS. Or, of course, non remunerated activities, working for charities for example. Some mechanism would be needed to ensure MPs that claimed to have stepped back from their before election activities, Rees Mogg for example, had really stepped back. I think the exceptions could be managed but IMO all this other woolly consultancy and advice stuff is really just MP’s leveraging insider information. To a greater or lesser degree.

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You couldn’t make this up…

"The intervention came as Cox, who is a former attorney general, was criticised for being paid £150,000 for working for a month in the British Virgin Islands (BVI) during lockdown.

In his second job as a lawyer, the Torridge and West Devon MP advised the Caribbean tax haven in relation to corruption charges brought by the Foreign Office"

Would the legal profession be included as an exception?

No, in fact I would bar ambulance chasing shysters from from every holding office.

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As a personal preference, no. A disproportionate number of my pals are solicitors and I’ve generally found in business that they, with a couple of notable exceptions over the years, create more problems than solutions. They are even worse than chartered accountants :joy:

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