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GETTING PAIDMPMPMPMPMPMPMPMPMPTVMPGBTVMPMPGMPMPMPMPMPMPYour browser does not support the element. for eating camel’s penis and sheep’s vagina on television may be an unnatural activity for an , but it was lucrative work for Matt Hancock. The former health secretary, who represented West Suffolk in the House of Commons for 14 years until May, pocketed £320,000 ($400,000) for appearing on “I’m a Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here” in 2022. Second jobs reward some s handsomely. Do they serve their constituents’ interests?That is the question Parliament’s Modernisation Committee seeks to answer over the coming months. Chaired by Lucy Powell, the leader of the House, it will explore what “media appearances, journalism and speeches furnish to the public, versus the potential conflicts of interest”. A new analysis by of s’ financial disclosures between 2010 and 2024, finds that they spent a collective total of 50,000 hours and earned £27m doing such jobs.For years s were encouraged to take on other work. In 1995 a parliamentary committee set up in response to a “cash for questions” scandal concluded that a chamber full of exclusively full-time s “would not serve the best interests of democracy”But another scandal in 2009—about parliamentary expenses—meant that for the past 15 years s have had to provide details about their finances, including remuneration from second jobs and total hours worked. The messy data remained largely inaccessible for analysis. We have cleaned it up using code and artificial intelligence.The numbers are striking. s have raked in £65m across all kinds of second jobs over the past 15 years. In addition to the £27m from media gigs and speeches (see top chart), they have earned £38m from practising law, medicine or consulting. Although paid lobbying is prohibited under the s’ code of conduct, its restrictions on second jobs are open to some interpretation. Owen Paterson, a Tory from 1997 to 2021, was found to have breached the code by receiving a £100,000 salary for lobbying, in “an egregious case of paid advocacy”. Ms Powell closed two potential loopholes in October to further restrict which jobs are permitted. But should media appearances and speeches continue to be allowed?Although Mr Hancock’s foray was unorthodox, media moonlighting is nothing new. Boris Johnson, a former prime minister, earned £275,000 a year (roughly £5 a word) for writing a weekly column in the when he was a backbencher. Before David Lammy became foreign secretary he was paid £180,000 for presenting a radio show between 2019 and 2024. Nigel Farage, the new for Clacton, has taken home £95,000 for 36 hours’ work since July, hosting the 7pm slot on News.We have split income from media work and speeches into five categories. The most lucrative is speeches (£16.5m, including Mr Johnson’s £276,130 for remarks at the Council of Insurance Agents & Brokers in Colorado Springs in October 2022), followed by books (£5.8m), print journalism (£2.0m), appearances (£1.8m) and £500,000 for other channels such as radio. It is a minority pursuit: of the 1,369 s that have served in the Commons between 2010 and 2024, only 412 have earned any income from media jobs and, of those, 253 earned less than £5,000.The biggest ten earners—among them four former prime ministers—account for some £17m, or 63%, of the total media earnings (see bottom chart). The ministerial code prevents ministers from doing any paid media work, but it does not stop them once they return to the backbenches. Mr Johnson earned £4.3m from speeches in the nine months between being ousted from Downing Street and standing down as an . Theresa May, another former prime minister, earned £3.9m in her five years as a backbencher before her ascent to the Lords. Since he was elected Mr Farage has earned £39,000 for three days’ work producing videos for Cameo, a personalised-video service.The disclosures also shed light on how the media landscape has changed. Excluding the pay for star columnists like Mr Johnson, the average pay per article at a national newspaper has fallen from £750 in 2010-14 to £550 over the past five years. Speeches pay £1,900 per hour on average, compared with a mere £225 for an hour of print journalism and £160 for radio.Britain’s lower chamber is not unusual. All other 7 countries allow its elected representatives to have second jobs (as long as they are declared). But Simon Weschle, a professor of political science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, finds that s in Britain are about eight times more likely than politicians in other countries to moonlight in the media, perhaps because so many s are former hacks.Sir Keir Starmer, the prime minister, has said that restoring trust in politics is the “great test of our era”. The Modernisation Committee may follow the lead of America’s Congress, which limits second incomes to 15% of salaries (a cap that would have affected some 200 s in 2010-24). But base salaries in the House of Representatives are 50% higher than in the Commons, whose members periodically complain that their £91,000 a year is too low.Public opinion is clear: 68% of respondents to a YouGov poll in August said that s should have second jobs only in exceptional circumstances, if at all. The weight of outside interests has skewed heavily to Conservative s in recent years, notes Hannah White of the Institute for Government, a think-tank. For Labour, therefore, “as well as fulfilling its manifesto pledge, restricting the earnings of s who may be critical of the government on right-wing media outlets may have some political attraction too.”
