Steerpike Steerpike

Sleaze scandal scuppers second jobs

Leon Neal/Getty Images

So Owen Paterson managed in a month what 100 years of opposition efforts couldn’t: turn his true blue seat to yellow for the first time since the aftermath of the Boer War. Mr S wonders if his newly elected successor Helen Morgan will show her appreciation in her maiden speech – ‘thanks Owen, couldn’t have done it without you.’ 

But even though he’s gone, Paterson’s influence still seems to be felt on the green benches. For it seems that the sleaze scandal which his downfall triggered has spooked older MPs into quitting lucrative second jobs, judging by the newly-updated register of members’ interests. A number of senior Tories have shed many of these commitments in the last three weeks.

These include Sir Greg Knight, who has now left his role as an adviser to Cambridge and Counties Bank which he held since the 2019 election. The East Yorkshire MP was paid £16,000 monthly in arrears tp provide ‘general business and public relations advice’ but updated his entry on 2 December to note he stopped this role on 30 November.

Incidentally that was the exact same day that fellow grandee Iain Duncan Smith stepped back from his second £20,000 per year job advising Tunstall Health Group. Within a fortnight of the Paterson scandal blowing up, Julian Smith also quit some £144,000 worth of advisory roles, with ex-health minister Steve Brine relinquishing his £1,666 a month gig with Sigma pharmaceutical firm.

Freshman MP Ruth Edwards meanwhile shows no sign of renouncing her role as one of the two directors of Mongoose Bridge alongside her husband Owen. But the company’s £5,000 month contract to provide ‘advice on public sector, technology strategy and cyber security’ to MHR International will now end in a fortnight’s time – five months earlier than originally envisaged.

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