Why MPs can’t afford to ignore the rules on lobbying

Members of parliament must balance their personal interests and financial needs with the high standards demanded by the public

Owen Paterson resigned as MP for North Shropshire after he was found to have breached Commons rules on ‘paid advocacy’ (Getty)

At the heart of the Owen Paterson controversy, and thus the current debate on standards in public life is the issue of lobbying. It is also at the centre of some understandable confusion about what MPs are and are not allowed to do.

The first, basic difference to understand is that MPs are allowed to lobby ministers, fellow MPs and anyone else for that matter for various causes. MPs who oppose fox hunting, or green taxes, or want to argue for the rights of the people of South Sudan, say, are entitled to do so.

MPs are also allowed to have “second jobs”, such as company directorships, consulting fees for offering political or expert guidance, and practising trades and professions, such as journalism, the law or, more rarely, medicine. They can serve on the committees of NGOs, charities, and governing bodies of school or hospital trusts. And so on. But in all cases the interests need to be declared in the register of interests, and at the point of any correspondence of conversations with third parties, so everyone knows where an MP is coming from.