Plans to cap UK MPs’ earnings from second jobs dropped

Exclusive: ministers tell Commons standards committee that a ceiling on such earnings would be ‘impractical’

Plans to cap MPs’ earnings from second jobs have been dropped months after the issue provoked a sleaze scandal that plunged Boris Johnson’s government into crisis, the Guardian can reveal.

Ministers told the Commons standards committee that a time limit or ceiling on such earnings would be “impractical”.

The prime minister pledged last year to clamp down on MPs’ second jobs after the Owen Paterson lobbying scandal and a furore over Geoffrey Cox being paid nearly £6m as a lawyer since joining parliament, voting by proxy on days he was undertaking paid work.

At the time, Dominic Raab, the deputy prime minister, said the government would back reasonable limits on MPs’ outside earnings, saying: “You could do it in one of two ways, you could do it by the amount or you could do it by the number of hours. We’ve asked the committee on standards to work up the detail by January.” Another minister, Anne-Marie Trevelyan, suggested that around 10-15 hours a week would be reasonable.

However, the government revealed that it no longer backs such limits in its submission to the current consultation by the Commons standards committee, seen by the Guardian.

The conclusion, from Steve Barclay, the chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster, and Mark Spencer, the leader of the House of Commons, said: “It is the government’s initial view that the imposition of fixed constraints such as time limits on the amount of time that Members can spend on outside work would be impractical.

“The imposition of time limits would not necessarily serve to address recent concerns over paid advocacy and the primary duty of MPs to serve their constituents. It could be possible, for example, for a Member to conduct work within the accepted time limits but that does not necessarily mean such work is ‘appropriate’ even if it did not constitute ‘paid advocacy’.”

They add: “In respect of a cap on earnings from outside work to impose such a limit could serve to prohibit activities which do not bring undue influence to bear on the political system. Earnings from activities such as writing books for example, would not preclude Members from meeting their principal duty to their constituents.”

During his time as an MP, Johnson registered £88,000 as an advance from the publisher Hodder & Stoughton for a book “as yet unwritten” in 2015.

The government said it would support reforms to “restrict the type of outside work which MPs are able to undertake” but did not set out what these should be beyond supporting the current proposal to ban “paid parliamentary advice, consultancy, or strategy services”. It will make its final decision after the consultation is concluded and the committee has produced its final report.

In contrast, the Committee for Standards in Public Life put forward a suggestion of an “objective means of setting reasonable limits” on earnings by MPs from second jobs.

“We believe the Standards Committee and the House should set an indicative limit of hours and remuneration, with a rebuttable presumption that paid outside employment exceeding those limits would be considered unreasonable,” its chair, Lord Evans, said in his submission.

The government also took issue with a number of other suggested changes, including the idea that MPs could be referred to the standards commissioner for behaviour in the Commons. It opposed changes to the MPs’ code of conduct to make it an offence for any member to “subject anyone to unreasonable and excessive personal attack in any medium”. The government said this could have a chilling effect on free speech and unduly stop MPs from expressing their views.

Numerous – largely Conservative – MPs also responded to the consultation on their standards regime with a wide range of criticisms. Tory MP Craig Whittaker described some of the proposals on limits and declaring contracts for second jobs as “more nonsense! Bureaucratic, burdensome and just plain ridiculous” and “another ‘barking mad’ idea!”.

Philip Dunne, a Tory MP and former minister with a second job that pays him £3,400 a month as a non-executive director, warned that a system to ban paid parliamentary consultancy had “led to the loss of experienced and qualified experts from parliamentary discourse” from the House of Lords.

The committee on standards released its proposals for the code of conduct in November. It said MPs should face a complete ban on working as paid consultants and ministers should be more open about any potential conflicts of interest.

Other recommendations included an obligation for MPs to have a written contract for any outside work, available for inspection if needed, and which would spell out that they cannot lobby on behalf of the employer.

It also raised the possibility of limits on how much time MPs can spend on outside jobs or other interests, and how much they can be paid for them, but said this would need cross-party support.