Another Voice

4 July 2009

It is good that MPs have second jobs — but they should share the proceeds

No columnist should read too much into online responses to what he has written. No more than those who call in to radio phone-in programmes are those who post their comments online representative of readers as a whole — let alone the population as a whole. But I try to read properly the letters readers write or the comments they post online, because the sample of those moved to respond, though unrepresentative, is significant. It may tell you something about way the wind blows.

So were I a Conservative MP I would have been depressed to scan the online response from Times readers to a column I wrote there last week. I mentioned in passing (it was not my main theme) that some people believe MPs should be free to have outside earnings. If any subset of the overall electorate were disposed to give this argument a hearing, it would surely be the readers of quality newspapers.

‘Matthew: this is one of the most inane and hilarious Times Comment articles ever. MPs of any party should NOT have second/third etc jobs — Peter in London.’

‘We think being an MP is just a job... This MUST be full time, liaising with constituents, on parliamentary business and keeping informed on key issues — Richard, Cheltenham.’

Opinion polling will, I believe, powerfully reinforce the impression those two examples give. This issue of second jobs is a straw at which a drowning Prime Minister is now clutching in his juvenile quest to find ‘dividing lines’ with the Tories. But Gordon Brown may be onto something here; and before Tory backbenchers dig themselves into the trench in which he hopes to see them, I want to remind the Parliamentary Conservative Party that for serious politicians it isn’t only a matter of whether the public are right, but whether — if they are wrong — there’s any reasonable prospect of changing their minds.

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Brian John Nicholson

July 2nd, 2009 12:15pm Report this comment

Many people with the power to award or influence contracts later serve on the boards of companies involved. Is there really a difference between this and second jobs?

JohnAnt

July 3rd, 2009 3:15pm Report this comment

Matthew - The way anybody gets to know about the world of work (business, industry, agri,etc) is by doing it BEFORE becoming an MP. Not while being an MP - that simply brings a conflict of interest, financial and personal.
That Hague does after-dinner speaking, or Lewin works for a bank, is simply being greedy. I'm sure they both feel it 'helps' their work in the Commons. But to the rest of us, it's just greed and self-indulgence. MPs are adequately paid, and I'd suggest putting an embargo on all second jobs until their legislative drafting improves - at the moment it's pi** poor.

paul gilboy

July 3rd, 2009 6:46pm Report this comment

Nonsense ! why should anyone work to give up their income. parliament benefits by different interests being represented in parliament.
mr browns proposal will see a political class cut off from society, totally beholden to a party machine for their liveli hood.
he speaks nonsense and your parrying it, quite literally.

stephen bull

July 6th, 2009 4:58pm Report this comment

Many MPs do now have second jobs - as ministers. Should they not be asked to reveal how much time they spend on their Whitehall duties at the expense of their constituents? The growing insistence on the full time nature of the job of an MP might make some think that ministers should not sit as members at all but be replaced by substitutes while they hold office. They must of course be answerable in the Commons for the Government's policy but they would not vote in the name of their constituents.
Not really Parliamnetary democracy but that is at a low ebb anyway and it does work elsewhere in quite successful countries!
(Charles Moore was writing along these lines today however my letter to The Times was rejected.)

Shaun Hexter

July 6th, 2009 5:26pm Report this comment

A novel idea, but nobody else would dream of voluntarily sharing the proceeds of their labours to such an extent. I think the argument should be rephrased along the lines that law making is NOT a full time job and should not be so. As someone else has commented, representatives without outside jobs would become a political class cut off from reality. Indeed, it is a testament to those with such jobs that other companies are willing to employ them - after all, we do not know our MPs well enough to decide if they really are employable and therefore useful to the wider society. It also gives them a valid reason to earn a living without resorting to dubious expense claims. Indeed, I think that not only legislative representatives (MPs and peers) should be encouraged to work in the 'real world' but I would argue that other representatives should also be ordinary people - judges spring to mind. Magistrates are real people, supposedly able to empathise, like jurors, with the judged and the victims, so why not judges? Indeed, I would argue that having more ordinary people in such positions would ensure that judgements and sentences do not stray so far as they have from what ordinary people would consider natural justice.

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