Westminster Accounts: Liz Truss paid £15,770 an hour for second jobs – as exterior earnings of MPs revealed

MPs with second jobs have a mean wage of £233 per hour, Sky News can reveal.

The typical charge for MPs is 17 occasions the nationwide common – and over 22 increased than the minimal hourly wage.

The highest hourly charge for a present MP goes to Liz Truss, who bought £15,770 per hour.

Ms Truss’s most profitable work since leaving Number 10 has been a speech in Taiwan. She was paid at a charge of £20,000 per hour – practically 1,500 occasions the UK common hourly wage – for her insights into international diplomacy.

Even increased than Ms Truss is Boris Johnson, who resigned as an MP final month. His hourly charge is available in at £21,822, however having left parliament, he’s free to work with out having to publicly file his earnings.

The leaderboard of the MPs with the 20 highest hourly charges on this parliament reveals a transparent sample: 18 have authorities expertise, suggesting a ministerial background is valued by some employers.

Use this interactive Westminster Accounts desk to see what number of hours every MP has labored in second jobs, and the equal hourly charge they’ve obtained:

Westminster Accounts – seek for your MP with our interactive software

The Westminster Accounts venture – produced in affiliation with media firm Tortoise – has analysed the info MPs present about how a lot time they’ve labored on second jobs on this parliament.

The MP who information the very best hours exterior their work as a backbench MP is Douglas Ross, the chief of the Conservatives within the Scottish Parliament.

He recorded working 3,869 hours on high of his position as an MP: 3,739 hours as an MSP, 89 hours for the Scottish Football Association as a referee, and the remaining refereeing in different roles.

Mr Ross is standing down as an MP on the subsequent election to focus on his work in Scotland, however political double-jobbing of this nature shouldn’t be routinely thought-about controversial in Westminster.

Dr Dan Poulter is the MP who spends essentially the most period of time in a non-political job. The Conservative and NHS hospital physician works in psychological well being providers. He has registered 3,508 hours because the 2019 election.

The MP registering essentially the most hours within the personal sector is barrister Sir Geoffrey Cox, who put the tally at 2,565.

The highest Labour title on this record is the shadow overseas secretary David Lammy, who has labored practically 1,000 hours for 45 totally different organisations. He has labored virtually 700 hours in second jobs because the Labour chief Sir Keir Starmer introduced a coverage to ban them within the aftermath of the Owen Paterson scandal.

Westminster Accounts at a look: use the desk under to see how a lot cash has gone to events, MPs and APPGs within the type of donations and earnings because the 2019 election – and the people or organisations behind the funding.

Jill Rutter, the previous high official now with the Institute for Government, questioned whether or not MPs had been required to file their exterior hours within the appropriate means, provided that MPs typically register 4 or 5 hours when giving an abroad speech would take them overseas for a number of days.

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She stated: “I think we can probably rely on [this system] to answer the question ‘How long does a particular task take?’ – I don’t think we can rely on it to answer the question about ‘How unavailable does that make you?’

“If you give a speech in London, you place down an hour-and-a-half. That’s most likely fairly truthful.

“But the same speech given in Chicago or Calcutta, it’s an hour-and-a-half of the speech, but actually you were away from the country quite a long time. So if we want to say how available are you as an MP, the system is really not very good for that.”

Content Source: information.sky.com