Should MPs have second jobs?
The question of MPs pay and responsibilities came to the fore again final week, with revelations that Jack Straw and Sir Malcolm Rifkind roughshod victim to a sting operation past newspaper who were pretending to offer payment for lobbying. This was all the more surprising given the reputation and experience of the two MPs concerned—and given that almost exactly the aforementioned affair had happened in 1998 with about exactly the same result.
I have some sympathy with their plight, in that there are some mutual aspects of working as a clergyperson and working equally an MP. There aren't quite the aforementioned opportunities to work as a high-paid consultant when you are ordained (!) (although many would like this) but at that place is a like sense of autonomy and flexibility. In both roles y'all are, in some sense, functioning as someone who is self-employed. The role specification is quite general; yous do not really take the equivalent of a line manager; and your working context means that a lot of the time you are working on your own, or at least you make your own decisions about what you lot focus on and for how long. This ways that amongst clergy, as amid MPs, there is a wide variation on how hard people work and what you spend your time doing. (One now-retired bishop one time said to me 'Half my clergy are workaholics; the other half are lazy.)
The big difference between MPs and clergy (apart from earning ability!) is that, if you are in full-time stipendiary ministry building, then you need to declare all other income which is and so deducted from your stipend. Some accept proposed a similar system for MPs—I dubiety information technology would ever be accustomed, but it would certainly resolve the problem.
This design of working means that in that location are some common-sense facts that we need to bear in mind when considering the question of second jobs for MPs.
First, the task of existence a constituency MP need not necessarily take upwards all of a person's time. This is evident from the fact that, even with Parliament, many MPs have additional roles. Rifkind was chair of an Intelligence Committee; many MPs choose to be part of one of the many select committees, as this is a way to exercise influence from the back benches. And of class, whatever MP with a ministerial part volition have significant additional responsibilities and demands on his or her time. So those without such additional responsibilities could potentially have fourth dimension in their schedules for other work.
Simply this all depends on how much energy you put into your constituency work. When Nick Palmer was my MP (Labour, Broxtowe), I used to email him fairly oft, and I cannot remember a single occasion when he did not answer within 24 hours. Our present MP, Anna Soubry (Conservative) is much less responsive, in role considering she has a ministerial portfolio. I am still waiting for a full answer to a question ane year on. And other MPs, in demanding constituencies, find the job (if they did it fully) would accept more than 24 hours a day. Sarah Champion became MP for Rotherham almost by accident, and is clear she volition just do it for a express period:
You get into a bike, you're working really hard, and so you stop seeing your friends. Then, because yous finish seeing your friends you lot throw yourself into work and the whole thing perpetuates. At Christmas, I actually took a week off, information technology's the first time I've had a full calendar week off, my friends were like, 'who the hell are you?'. Things like Twitter and 24-60 minutes-news means you are e'er working. It'south horrendous. The job is fabled. The lifestyle is living hell.
(I do wonder whether there is a divergence hither between men and women; men appear to find it easier to switch off and put boundaries effectually their piece of work, and therefore perhaps are not in general equally conscientious. Just a thought…)
Champion finishes her reflection with a fascinating observation which is pertinent to the question of second jobs.
My plan is to do another five years and and so go. I don't think it's healthy to be in that location for too long. Considering the longer you're there, the more distant you lot get from reality.
This has in fact been another mutual justification for the idea that MPs should exist able to have second jobs—to go on them in bear upon with reality. It is a serious effect, with the 'professionalisation' of politics, and this has afflicted the Labour Party—who now consist nearly entirely of career politicians, in contrast to the previous generation of Labour MPs—more than the Conservatives, many of whom have come up into politics as a second profession. What I discover odd hither, though, is that the 'reality' which most want to accept experience of is the reality of business and highly paid jobs. Malcom Rifkind is already earning around £250,000 a year from '2nd jobs', and Jack Harbinger commented that he gets paid £5,000 a day for speaking. It is difficult to imagine something that would take youfurther from the 'reality' of your constituents than this!
If reality is the issue, then why not do voluntary work in a local hospital or schoolhouse? Or, for a radical idea, try living on an average wage? This isn't near the 'politics of envy' only trying to put things in perspective. The basic bacon for MPs, at £67,000 a year, compares well with the median income for doctors (at £71,000) and solicitors (£41,000). The reality is that many MPs spend time with people are are in the top 1%, and this seems to distort their expectations. If MPs' pay was increased, the just likely upshot is that Jack Straw would proportionately increase his speaking fee. Within the cabinet, we are almost exclusively governed by (multi-)millionaires.
In fact, this baloney is office of a wider phenomenon in our civilization—that money tin can (and possible should) buy you annihilation. Peter Oborne left the Telegraph last week out of disgust at the way the once-respectable paper bowed to financial pressures from advertising—a cardinal ane being HSBC. HSBC start withdrew advertising, and so reinstated information technology in render for the Telegraph cancelling their investigations and reporting on the now well-known problems of advice on revenue enhancement evasion. The paper had likewise taken out a £250m loan from the depository financial institution. And one of the shocking things about the Jimmy Savile affair is that hospitals failed to investigate claims against him because they were worried it would undermine fund-raising.
The way that financial interests distort our judgement has even penetrated the tax organization. Information technology is often noted that a small-scale grouping of the very top earners pay a quarter of all income tax that is collected, and in fact this has increased under the present Government. Only notice the misleading impression in this headline:
New figures published by HMRC show that the proportion of the nation'southward revenue enhancement bill paid by the richest has risen under the Coalition
In fact, this relates to income tax alone, and non the 'nation's tax bill.' Income tax only contributes about 1 tertiary of all tax raised, and this headline leads people to believe, completely erroneously, that the revenue enhancement system is helping to redistribute wealth. In fact, the poorest 10% of households pay eight percentage points more than of their income in all taxes than the richest – 43% compared to 35%, according to a report from the Equality Trust. This arises from a historic shift from direct to indirect taxation—from raising tax through income to raising revenue enhancement through expenditure. Since those who are less well off will always spend a higher proportion of their income on necessities, indirect taxation volition always penalise them more. How is it possible to justify, in any context, the poorest paying a greater proportion of their income in revenue enhancement than the richest? And all the same no political party is proposing the basic rethink of the taxation system that this figure requires.
The issue of MPs' second jobs is just the tip of a problematic financial iceberg that most haven't fifty-fifty spotted.
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