Dominic Lawson: Our lawmakers should be allowed to do second jobs, but not as company lobbyists

Angela Rayner, deputy leader labor partyIt’s always good to have a laugh. Although not intentionally.

An example of the latter was provided by his appearance on yesterday’s Andrew Marr Show, when the presenter questioned him about his party’s attitude towards ‘second job’ lawmakers.

Rainer was quite clear: these were unacceptable and should be ‘banned’.

Oh, so what about the leader of your party, Marr asked. Keer starrer, who has earned £100,000 in legal fees while also serving as an MP? Rainer’s pale blue eyes looked like terror.

Rather than address the question, he talks about ‘taxpayers’ money wasted on ‘dodgy contracts’ in favor of Tory party donors: a valid case to investigate, but a different issue.

Marr then asked him why it was, in 2015, standing on a manifesto, that MPs should be barred from taking income as advisor, Keir Starmer later gave advice to the government of Gibraltar for around ££ took 10,000. Rainer ‘answered’ it, continuing to rail about the Conservatives giving ‘billions of pounds in dodgy contracts’.

What some might see as comical profanity, others would find infuriating. The issue of MPs having second jobs needs to be addressed honestly and accurately, rather than just becoming a political game in itself.

naivety

However, it is true that the Tories have more questions than Labor in the wake of Boris Johnson’s failed and futile attempt to overturn the Commons Committee on Standards to find that former cabinet minister Owen Patterson called the rules ‘arrogant’. was broken Paid lobbying.

The government came under further pressure after the Daily Mail’s revelation that Sir Geoffrey Cox, the Conservative MP for Tories and West Devon, was earning hundreds of thousands of pounds a year from his legal work, including the most recent of a long and lucrative stay. Included. British Virgin Islands.

Sir Geoffrey has only spoken in the Commons once since the prime minister dismissed him from cabinet in February, but insists he continues to represent his constituents fairly.

Yet, this eminent lawyer has raised the limits of credibility if he wants to convince his voters that he considers them, and not his legal clients, as his primary concern.

Nevertheless, there has been a long tradition of MPs with the additional title of QC to maintain their legal practice while serving as backbenchers in Parliament.

Sir Keir Starmer is the most prominent recent example, and there are others in the current House, such as Joanna Cherry of the SNP.

I don’t mind his ‘double’ job. Yet there comes a point at which an MP is taking the p***, and many of Cox’s colleagues on the Conservative bench believe he is doing exactly that. But Sir Geoffrey’s practice, although excessive, as an advisor to businesses or organizations is far less objectionable than taking advantage of the position of MP to gain consultancy work.

In these cases, not only does this make the MP a paid agent of influence within Parliament (even if it does not involve direct lobbying of ministers made for Owen Patterson’s political career), but it is almost certainly work that does. They will not be found without the letter MP after their name.

This should stop, as should the practice of giving former members of the House of Commons passes so that they can continue to advocate for their clients at the Palace of Westminster even when they are no longer MPs.

But when some (not so) honorable members leave Parliament for not meeting their expected standards, many lose their seats in the general election, only because of the swing of the political pendulum.

Job security is weak for MPs, at least in marginal seats. This is another reason why I have tolerance for ‘second job’ MPs. For example, if a doctor who simultaneously becomes an MP leaves his medical practice altogether, re-registration is a difficult task, especially after a long period of absence from the profession.

servants

In fact, the medical profession best reflects a point that has not yet sparked an uproar over the second job of lawmakers. There are thousands of people in public service jobs, funded by the taxpayer, who do ‘private work’ – and none other than doctors.

When Labor Health Secretary Aneurin Bevan fought to create a National Health Service, she faced a bitter fight from the British Medical Association, which clearly did not want its members to be merely servants of the state, and demanded that They can continue to watch privately. Patient.

Bevan backed down, and the law also allowed doctors working in the NHS to practice privately. That is why, in 1948, Bevan declared that he was only able to win the profession by ‘filling doctors’ mouths with gold’.

Not all doctors accept this. In 2015, Dr John Dean, a senior cardiologist, claimed that the optional addition of private exercise ‘created a distorted incentive to increase your NHS wait times – after all, the longer they are, the more private practice accrues’ ‘.

They concluded that doctors who ‘doubled’ their work in the private sector ‘have a direct adverse effect on the NHS’. (I would contend that all the better people using private health are paying the bulk of the taxes that fund public healthcare, and that by ‘going private’ they are taking the strain off the NHS.)

Then there’s the fact that thousands of police officers, who are paid on the basis that they are full-time, also have a second job in the private sector – minicab-driving is one of the most popular incremental earners.

Same is the case with firefighters. This doesn’t just apply to part-time firefighters: many of those designated as ‘full-time firefighters’ also have a second job – and freedom of information requests have been revealed, a vast category of them, ‘new and used cars’. Vendor’ to ‘Karate Instructor’.

Theory

It is true that MPs with a basic salary of £81,932 make much more than police officers or firefighters (though slightly less than the starting salary of an NHS hospital consultant of £84,559). But if we are to stick strictly to the principle that private work should not be done in the public service (and with the relatively generous pension that goes with it), it will not just be a furious movement by lawmakers for more money. to the taxpayer with reference to his regular salary.

And, in addition, there is a specific class of MPs, currently all Tories, who do a great job on top of being an MP and looking after their constituents. There are about 100 of them.

Can you guess what that highly sought extra job is?

He is a minister in the government. And they are paid a significant supplement, in addition to their salaries as MPs, for those additional responsibilities.

I spoke to a cabinet minister last week, who explained that he still does ‘surgery’ of his constituency every fortnight and that it is quite possible to be an outstanding constituency MP while carrying out the arduous duties of the office.

By the way, in France they see things differently. There cannot be any minister, MP (deputation) or even a senator. So when a member of one of those chambers is appointed to become a minister, he has to resign from his role as MLA.

I doubt the British would want to adopt that system, not least because we like to have our ministers in Parliament answer questions and objections from the opposition.

There is one last point in favor of second jobs for MPs (unless, as I said, it does not amount to exploitation of their parliamentary privileges).

It is consistently said that we don’t just want a ‘career politician’ who is 100 per cent dependent on the choice of his leader or party hierarchy. So let’s not make the House of Commons a place exclusively for such people.