Boris Johnson paid more than £160k for giving two speeches

Boris Johnson has continued to take advantage of the more liberal rules on MPs’ outside earnings compared with those for ministers, earning more than £160,000 for two speeches last month, the register of MPs’ interests shows.

Johnson, who left the cabinet in July last year in protest at Theresa May’s Brexit plans, was paid £122,899.74 for a speech to India Today on 2 March, with transport and accommodation also provided.

The figure eclipses the £51,250 Johnson received from the Irish firm Pendulum Events for a speech in Dublin in February.

The latest register of interests, published on Thursday, shows that 10 days after the speech in India, Johnson, a key figurehead in the Vote Leave campaign, gave a speech to Citigroup in Canary Wharf for which he was paid £38,250.

In January the Citigroup chief executive, Michael Corbat, said the banking giant would be forced to move at least one third of its business currently conducted in Britain to the continent after Brexit. The firm employs about 9,000 people in the UK.

In 2016, it paid George Osborne £85,000 for two speeches after he was sacked from the cabinet.

In November last year, Johnson received £94,507.85 from New York-based GoldenTree Asset Management for a speaking engagement.

Johnson is paid nearly £23,000 a month for his weekly Daily Telegraph column. In December he offered MPs a “full and unreserved apology” in the House of Commons over the late declaration of more than £52,000 in income from his newspaper column and books.

The parliamentary commissioner for standards, Kathryn Stone, said that the former foreign secretary admitted he had failed to register payments in time on nine occasions in the previous 12 months.

The register also shows that Johnson, the favourite to be the next Conservative leader, received an £8,000 donation last month from JCB, which is owned by Anthony Bamford, a pro-Brexit Conservative peer and donor. JCB had previously given Johnson a donation of £15,000 in February.

In January, it also paid him £10,000 three days before he gave a speech at its headquarters in which he repeatedly praised the company’s business acumen. He later registered an additional £4,000 donated in kind on the day for use of the venue and helicopter flights for Johnson and a member of his staff.

The latest register shows that in March, Johnson’s fellow Brexiter Jacob Rees-Mogg was paid in champagne for a speech by Global Media and Entertainment, which owns radio stations including Heart, Classic FM and Capital. It states that Rees-Mogg “received twelve bottles of champagne with a total value of £323.52”.

In January, Rees-Mogg hosted a champagne party for Brexiter colleagues after inflicting a bruising defeat on Theresa May’s Brexit deal.