The Tories will be hoping this scandal simply goes away – it must not

Editorial: The complexities of the rules have made it easy for MPs to claim that the problem of second jobs is too hard to solve – all rather convenient

(Dave Brown)

The first job of a member of parliament can be found in the name. Parliament is derived from the French, “parler”, to speak. Parliaments, at least in theory, wield influence through the power of persuasion. So it is something of a wonder that many MPs seem able to command such large sums for second jobs, while being so demonstrably and publicly awful at the first.

Attempts by members of Her Majesty’s government to justify what their colleagues get up to very much not in their spare time have ranged from the embarrassing to the non-existent. Trade secretary Ann-Marie Trevelyan really did say, on live television, that second jobs for MPs “bring a richness to our role as members of parliament”. That much, certainly is true.

And it brings more of a richness to some, than to others. Geoffrey Cox, who is, in name only, the member of parliament for West Devon, appears to have spent April not only living in the British Virgin Islands (and voting remotely in the House of Commons, as Covid rules permitted), but being paid hundreds of thousands of pounds giving legal advice to officials over corruption charges brought against them by the UK’s own government, of which he was, until fairly recently, a member.