Stop stalling on MP second jobs restrictions, government’s standards chief warns

Standards committee recommended partial MP jobs ban as far back as 2018

(REUTERS)

The chair of the government's independent standards committee has urged the government to restrict MPs from holding some second jobs – and warned politicians to stop stalling on the issue.

Lord Evans, who chairs the independent body, said his committee had made recommendations as far as 2018 that MPs should be banned from holding consultancy and advisory jobs.

"We have made a number of recommendations. I have been slightly frustrated, I guess, over the last couple of days, people calling for a review of MPs' second jobs and reviews of this and that," he told the BBC on Thursday.

"Our committee, an independent committee established by John Major with cross party representation has made recommendations on a number of these areas, including only last week.

"Those are on the table. We offer a way forward now which we means we can be confident that our standards bodies are independent, that our public life is being defended, that we don't need to set up a Royal Commission or public inquiry."

The chair of the Committee on Standards in Public Life, said that if an MP was spending a "huge amount of time" on a second job, they it would "get in the way of their ability to work in support of their constituents".

"They can't be maintaining support for their constituents," he said.

The cross-party committee's report said that MPs should not be able to "provide services such as parliamentary strategists, or advisors, or consultants".

Lord Evans said last week that Britain "could slip into being a corrupt country" and that "international perceptions" of standards in Britain could also suffer.

He warned: "Almost always the answer is there needs to be more independence. People don't trust a system where people sit as judges in their own court. So they meet as independence and that's one of the reasons we recommended last week that

"We undertook a report on this in 2018 and made recommendations then, and we also did a lot of polling on public views on this issue and the public as you expect were quite sophisticated in this - they recognised that there were certain jobs that it was right and appropriate that MPs should be able to hold in addition to their main responsibilities.

"But we recommended that MPs should not accept any paid work to provide services such as parliamentary strategists, or advisors, or consultants - because that was was in tension with the main job".