MPs who earned money from second jobs and freelance work spoke and voted less in Parliament in 2023, new analysis shows.
The analysis – using the Register of MPs’ Financial Interests and Hansard – also reveals that the more MPs earned for work outside Parliament last year, the less they tended to speak and vote in it.
On average, MPs who did not make any money from work outside Parliament made 110 speeches and 189 votes.
By contrast, their counterparts who took on second jobs and freelance work, spoke 84 times and cast 177 votes on average.
This means MPs making money outside their parliamentary duties made 23.6% fewer speeches and cast 6.4% fewer votes than those who did not take on any additional paid work.
Labour MP Richard Burgon, who has campaigned against MPs taking jobs outside Parliament, said: “Once again we see just how damaging second jobs are to our democracy.
“Far from making better MPs, as some claim, these second jobs are short-changing the public.
“It’s now time to end this gravy train once and for all. That can only be done with a proper ban on MPs’ second jobs.
“Some MPs may not like that. But the truth is that MPs are already well paid – in the top 5% of earners. If MPs don’t think that’s enough, they should resign because our democracy needs more people committed to public service, not seeing politics as a chance to line their pockets. They won’t be missed.”
Sue Hawley, executive director of Spotlight on Corruption, commented: “This intriguing research makes a very powerful case for what many people have said for a long time – that MPs are paid to do a day job, and represent their constituents, and that outside interests and earnings risk distracting them from this work.
“There are few other professions where people would be able to moonlight in this way with such a clear impact on their performance of the job.”
Relationship between MPs’ earnings and number of times they spoke in Parliament
The analysis shows that as MPs earned more, they tended to speak less in Parliament.
On average, the ten highest earning parliamentarians (who all made at least £170,000 from second jobs and freelance work), spoke just 40 times in Parliament, compared to the average of all MPs which was 102.
However, until MPs made more than £1,000 (as did the 132 highest earning), there was no relationship between them earning more while speaking less.
The relationship between earnings and speeches for all MPs is broadly comparable to the relationship observed for just Conservative parliamentarians, likely related to the fact most MPs (and most moonlighting parliamentarians) are Conservative.
However, Labour MPs did not, contrary to the trend for all parliamentarians, speak less while earning more.
In fact, Labour MPs earning more tended to speak more.
While Labour MPs spoke 86 times in the Commons on average, the top six highest earning made an average of 129 speeches, an increase of 50%.
However, this is largely due to outliers Chris Bryant – who earned £77,010 from work outside parliament, while speaking 249 times – and Jess Phillips – who received £21,645, while making 284 speeches.
Both were among the six highest earning Labour MPs.
Relationship between MPs’ earnings and number of times they voted in Parliament
The analysis also indicates a relationship between how much MPs earned from freelance work and second jobs last year and how many times they voted in Parliament.
As MPs earned more, the tended to vote less in Parliament. While the average number of votes cast by all MPs was 185, the 30 highest earners voted an average of 154 times, a drop of 16.3%.
However, the relationship is not entirely straightforward, given the 20 highest earners voted more times on average than the 60 highest.
A similar relationship between the average earned by MPs, for work outside Parliament, and the average number of times they voted, can be observed with respect to both Conservative and Labour MPs.
The ten highest earning Conservative MPs cast 25.9% fewer votes compared to all the party’s parliamentarians, while the top 10 Labour party earners voted 21.9% fewer times than did all Labour MPs.
MPs in focus
“Being an MP is a full-time job, so constituents will likely find it perplexing why their representatives take outside employment, too,” explained Transparency International UK’s Head of Research and Investigations, Steve Goodrich.
“It’s clear from recent cases that parliamentarians holding additional paid-for positions can be highly inappropriate, or present a distraction from their public duties.”
So, just how distracted might some parliamentarians have been?
Brandon Lewis was the 11th highest earning MP in 2023, receiving almost £150,000 for his work outside Parliament.
From January to October, the former housing minister took up five jobs, in addition to his work as MP for Great Yarmouth, including £60,000-a-year gigs providing advice to property developer Thakeham Homes and to infrastructure company FM Conway, as well as a job with LetterOne, an investment business partly owned by two sanctioned Russian oligarchs, for which he is paid £240,000 per annum.
Over the course of last year, the Tory MP spoke just eight times in the Commons.
In 2020, 2021 and 2022, when Lewis did not earn any money from work outside Parliament, he spoke 254, 310 and 158 times in the Commons respectively.
Lewis said: “The work of a MP is multi-faceted and the vast majority is not represented by time in the chamber.
“I continue to work hard to support the Conservative Government and to advocate for the communities within Great Yarmouth.”
Conservative MP for Bromsgrove, Sajid Javid, who is not standing at the next election, was the sixth highest earning MP in 2023, taking home over £268,000 in addition to his parliamentary salary.
This figure is largely due to Javid’s work as an adviser to investment firm Centricus Partners, where the former Chancellor and Business Secretary offers his “on global economic outlook, geo-politics and financial markets” for £25,000 a month. He took up the role on 6 March last year.
While making significant sums from his second job, Javid made only 13 speeches in the Commons in 2023, casting 179 votes.
Since 2020, Javid’s two highest years for earnings (2020 and 2023), were also those in which he spoke the fewest times in the Commons.
The money Javid earned from work in 2021 was for advising J.P. Morgan and AI software provider C3.ai. Both jobs came to an end on 26 June 2021, the same day he was appointed Health Secretary.
Between 1 January and 26 June 2021, Javid spoke just five times in the Commons. From 26 June until the end of the year, he spoke 624 times.
David Nicholls, a Bromsgrove Councillor who stood against Javid for the Liberal Democrats in the last general election, said of the current MP’s behaviour: “This is an utter disgrace and shows how the residents of Bromsgrove are being taken for granted by a part time MP in a lame duck Parliament.”
Liz Truss, who resigned as Prime Minister in October 2022 (having taken office the previous month), also had a busy 2023. She earned a total of £318,216 during the year, principally as payment for numerous speeches.
In the Commons, however, Truss spoke on only six occasions and voted just 49 times last year.
In 2020, 2021, and 2022, Truss earned only in the hundreds of pounds, with payments from a book she wrote in 2012. In these years, she spoke 407, 213, and 566 times in Parliament respectively.
Labour Councillor Terry Jermy, who will be standing against Truss in the next election, said: “Liz Truss is failing South West Norfolk like she failed the country and local residents are desperate for change.”
In 2023, Alok Sharma, Conservative MP for Reading West, earned more than £170,000 from his extra-Parliamentary work.
This was principally due to payments for a number of “speaking engagements,” as well as the fact he began a job, on 1 September, as an adviser “on geopolitical and economic trends, green finance, carbon transition and strategic issues” to the Northern European financial group, Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken.
For this job, Sharma receives an annual salary of £200,000.
Last year, he spoke only 11 times in the Commons and cast 167 votes.
In the previous three years, he did not earn any money from freelance work or second jobs, while making 346 (2020), 151 (2021), and 149 (2022) speeches in Parliament.
In 2020, when Sharma spoke a large number of times, he was serving as Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy for most of the year.
South Staffordshire’s Conservative MP Gavin Williamson earned £67,877, in addition to his parliamentary salary, last year.
This was because, on 21 February 2023, he started working as an adviser to undergraduate and postgraduate education provider RTC Education and received a £25,000 bonus for his work in September.
Williamson, who served as Education Secretary from July 2019 to September 2021, had previously worked for the education provider, as chairman of the advisory board, between June and October 2022, for which he was paid £17,500.
In 2023, the Tory MP spoke only 15 times in the Commons and in 2022 did so 35 times.
In 2020 and 2021, when Williamson was Education Secretary and not earning any money from a second job, he spoke 584 and 362 times respectively.
SW Londoner contacted Javid, Truss, Sharma and Williamson for comment, but did not receive any response.
Notes on the data
The graphs included in this article have been created using an accumulative average. The average speeches or votes made by the ten highest earning MPs was calculated first, followed by the 20 highest earning, then the 30 highest, and so on.
The number of MPs included in the subsequent calculation was always ten, unless this would mean MPs earning the same amount would be split between data points.
The graphs concerning only Labour MPs were calculated using the same method, except the number of MPs included in each calculation increased by six each time (unless there was good reason, as outlined above, to alter this).
All MPs were included in the calculations, except for those representing Sinn Fein, given that they do not attend Parliament, and the Speaker and Deputy Speakers, as due to their roles they do not vote, but speak a lot in the Commons.
Conservative MP Andrew Rosindell, who earned no money from work outside Parliament, while neither speaking nor voting, was also excluded from the data, given the peculiarity of his situation last year.
The amount an MP earned in 2023 was calculated from the Register of MPs’ Financial Interests, with all money received in the year included. However, if a newly elected MP received some payment for work done prior to their election, this was not included in the calculation.
If an MP undertook work for which payment was sent to a company in which they had a beneficial shareholding – like Brandon Lewis – this was included in the data as payment to the MP.
Only earnings registered by MPs were included. The one exception is Nadine Dorries, who did not register any earnings from her work for the Daily Mail and Talk TV, despite working for them for significant parts of the year, while she was an MP. In this case, her earnings for the work was estimated based on what other MPs had earned for comparable work.
The data on the number of times MPs voted and spoke in Parliament was taken from Hansard.
Hansard records the number of “spoken contributions” made by an MP, which have occasionally been referred to here as speeches, although both quick interjections made by an MP in a debate and longer speeches are considered “spoken contributions”.
Featured image credit: Wikimedia Commons/UK Parliament/Jessica Taylor/Stephen Pike under CC BY 3.0
