George Osborne’s announcement today that he
will not seek re-election as the Member for Tatton in June has resolved one of
the most controversial conflicts of interest of the past year or so. Mr Osborne
can now devote his time to the day job of being editor of the Evening Standard, while continuing his
four-days-a-month gig at Blackrock, for which he earns a very respectable £650,000. Well, a man’s gotta eat (caviar).
This is not how it was supposed to be. When
his surprise appointment at the ES was announced, he insisted that he would
continue to sit for his Cheshire seat in the House of Commons. Indeed, he
argued that Parliament would benefit, and that outside experience, remunerated
handsomely or not, helped MPs, especially former ministers, in “continuing to
contribute to the decisions we make”. (It should be noted that this would not
necessarily have been a long-term conflict of interest: had the Boundary
Commission’s proposals been implemented ahead of a general election in 2020, Mr
Osborne’s Tatton constituency would have been broken up.)
Inevitably, the Opposition, because it is
their job, decried Mr Osborne’s appointment and demanded that he resign from
the Commons. Jeremy Corbyn muttered darkly about press freedom and
impartiality, and one Labour MP spoke of the “deep overlap” between Mr
Osborne’s role as a legislator and his position as a newspaper editor. Some of
the sound and fury was synthetic and politically motivated, of course, and
no-one should criticise the Labour Party for that. Oppositions are supposed to
oppose. But it raised a deeper question. Should MPs have outside interests?
In times gone by, of course, it was
commonplace for Members of Parliament to have other interests. This was
reflected in the relatively paltry salary they received, and to some extent in
the sitting hours of the House. The Commons sat in the afternoon and evenings
because Members were at their day jobs the rest of the time. One great
disadvantage of this system was that it in effect required MPs to be wealthy individuals,
as the salary was not enough to support them, certainly not if they maintained
two homes.
(Can I pause here to rehearse one of my
bugbears: MPs are not paid enough. Sure, their salary is currently £74,000, plus allowances for offices, second homes and the like,
and that’s way above the national average. But I would argue two things.
Firstly, if you want to attract really bright people, you need to offer
competitive salaries. I know friends with political ambitions who would be
taking massive pay cuts to be MPs. The chief executive of Sunderland Council,
to take a random example, is paid more than £600,000. Who
do you want to scrutinise legislation and hold the Government to account? The
second, more fundamental, point is that the work MPs do is important, and that should be reflected in their remuneration. Rant
over.)
Outside interests are nowadays much less
common. Some former ministers have City directorships, and there are still a
few pre-eminent lawyers, like Sir Edward Garnier QC or Geoffrey Cox QC, who
make good livings at the Bar. For a very few (George Osborne is one of them, as
was Sir John Major in his time after 1997), speaking engagements offer
lucrative rewards. In the main, however, Members rely on their salaries and
concentrate on their duties in the House, whether in the Chamber, as members of
select committees or on constituency work. That is commendable in its own way,
and I know from experience that there are very few lazy MPs. They work hard and
they work long hours, for very little public esteem. They are certainly not in
it for the money.
My view is an unfashionable one now, but I
think a moderate amount of outside interest is a healthy thing. Different
experiences make MPs more rounded people, and allow them to maintain parallel
careers. It means that the ambitious need not choose so starkly between public
service and private remuneration, and offers the possibility of a continuing
career after Parliament. The value added by outside interests is evident to
anyone who spends a lot of time watching Commons debates, as I used to do as a
Serjeant at Arms. Dr Phillip Lee, for example, until he became a minister,
continued to practice as a GP part-time, so when he spoke on health issues, he
did so with current, front-line experience. Equally, when you hear one of the
really good lawyers, like Dominic Grieve QC, take apart a lazy argument with
forensic skill, you see the value of all those hours spent in the courtroom.
It’s a matter of balance, of course: being a Member of Parliament is time-consuming.
But I think this kind of life experience enriches the quality of debate and
scrutiny which the House of Commons can bring to bear.
Fundamentally, I don’t regard being an MP as
a job in the normal sense. It is many things: an honour, a burden, an
opportunity, a public service. Some Members devote themselves wholeheartedly to
Parliament, and that is a fine and noble thing. Here’s a strange thing, though.
George Osborne becomes editor of the Evening
Standard and there is an outcry at his having another job as well as being
an MP. Nobody complained when he was simultaneously MP for Tatton and
Chancellor of the Exchequer, which I’m fairly sure is quite a demanding role.
We accept without demur that MPs can be ministers – indeed, that, apart from the
Lords, ministers must be MPs, though
there is no constitutional requirement for this to be so – but anything outside
Whitehall, particularly one which smacks of personal enrichment, is infra dig.
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