I have a proposal for dealing with MPs who have other interests. It’s a solution I have proposed a number of times in different places, and in every case it has been very difficult to get reactions from others. This puzzles me. If there is something fatally wrong with my proposal, would somebody here please tell me, so I need not bother myself with it any more. If it is not fatally flawed, then I think it deserves a hearing.
I believe my suggestion is more liberal than the current free for all, and also more liberal than banning second jobs. My suggestion is not to ban MPs from having other jobs or other interests, but simply to ban them from voting on anything in which they have a financial interest (and maybe other kinds of interests as well). This is in line with practice in local authorities where representatives routinely recuse themselves from issues where they have declared an interest.
This might cause notable changes in the selection process. How eager would local parties be to appoint someone who had a directorship of a medical company and hence could not vote on any health issue? It might give rise to different, and more ethical, internal conversations among candidates. They would have to calculate their net worth as a candidate with and without their interests, and might thereby arrive at a more realistic assessment of what they can offer to the political process. It won’t in many cases; of course; people will continue to calculate purely in terms of political advantage, but it might change some conversations. Imagine all those Tory landlords who would not be able to vote on anything to do with housing.
There is much devil in the detail. Who decides what counts as a disqualification on a particular issue. Answer: the Parliamentary authorities, beefed up and properly funded. And the details are no more confounding than the details are now about what counts as declarable. And they should be, in my view, interpreted broadly – the emphasis should be that having an interest must disqualify unless the holder can show good reason why it does not. Using devices like blind trusts should not invalidate the disqualification. The principle should be that any member should regard their position in the commons as primary, not to be compromised by other interests. If they choose to have, or to keep, other interests, then they should accept the constraints those interests impose on their ability to be lawmakers. It may inspire in some a more thoughtful approach to the progression of their political career.
A digression
I want to comment, and here is a good place to do it, on the argument commonly put against preventing MPs from having other jobs, which is: what about those MPs who have specialists qualifications that they need or wish to keep up, and which require a certain amount of hours practice each year? In my view this argument has no force at all. Let us say that an MP may choose to keep up their licence as a surgeon. They need to practise a certain number of hours per year. But there is no requirement for them to be paid for those hours. Although some MPs claim poverty, they have a luxurious income by the standards of most of us. And if for some reason, that can’t be done, then when they leave office, they get a pay off most of us can only dream of – enough to keep them in the style to which they should not be accustomed while they requalify themselves.
* Rob Parsons is a Lib Dem member in Lewes. He blogs at http://acomfortableplace.blogspot.co.uk. He curates Liberal Quotes on Facebook
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I agree with most of what you say. As far as your last point about surgeons is concerned I think a better option is to allow them to be paid for those hours provided they are working in the NHS. Same should apply to other professionals (teachers perhaps) provided that they are working for public bodies, charities, or not-for-profit organisations. I agree that those who have outside jobs should be required to declare an interest and not vote on related matters like councillors have to.
I would go further than you in one respect – any MP who has outside earnings (or sponsorship) should have their MP salary reduced by 50p for every £1 of outside earnings, with perhaps some limited exceptions.
As usual those MP’s that struggle on 80k + a year with benefits & allowances the average person can only dream about – should give a thought to many pensioners this year who have been told that 10k is too much to get the winter fuel allowance….Thats what you get when you have professional politicians who’ve never done a triple shift on the mw ….How many salaries do they need ? …..Why isn’t their time occupied with constituency work – that should be their sole purpose when they are in receipt of taxpayers money …
I don’t think you should dismiss the argument about keeping up professional qualifications so lightly. I doubt whether it is possible for anyone to actually volunteer to do heart surgery. Given the uncertainty of any election it is only prudent for an MP to keep their qualifications up to date, and it would be easy enough to include that as an exception.
However the main argument about declaring financial interests is a no-brainer. In practice councillors have two options – declaring a non-pecuniary interest, which is simply providing information about possible bias, and declaring a pecuniary interest which means they cannot take part in a debate or vote. These interests are declared in advance and held on the register of interests which is in the public domain.
However I’m not sure that this would have any impact on selection processes, or indeed on elections.
I’m afraid I disagree with your suggestion about banning MPs from voting on Bills that could affect second jobs. I recall that an SNP MP continued to perform breast cancer operations for the NHS while being paid as an MP. I don’t think that was a bad thing. Ultimately, it is up to the voters to decide whether they wish to re-elect heir MPs so they can take into account any second jobs they may have as part of their decision making.
Most MPs don’t have second jobs, they have second roles. Being an MP is a mixture of a role and a vocation, because it’s left to each MP to decide how they discharge their duties. Many with a business background are used to juggling multiple directorships, both executive and non-executive. If some of them employ more case workers out of their own pocket so they have time to generate wealth, it’s not clear they are performing worse in their MP role than someone who takes the secular priest burden of doing everything themselves.
So yes, the main problem is conflict of interest. If UK PLC were run like a PLC with the Commons as the Board, MPs, like directors, would automatically have to recuse themselves from any vote in which they had a conflict of interest. Also the government would have to be returned by more than 50% of voters (as shareholders), and fundamental changes like brexit would require 75% agreement…
@Mary Reid 4.16pm I did not mean to be dismissive. While I agree being an MP is an uncertain career, the rewards are considerable: a very high pay rate, and very comfortable exit arrangements. I do think that if people want to be MPs they should not be half hearted about it, but should be committed to it, so they should think twice about having other careers while sitting as MPs.
I still think that using the issue of maintaining qualifications as an excuse not to do anything about conficting interests is a red herring. Under my scheme, they have three options:
a) they can continue to practise, and be paid, and pay the price of not voting on the topic in which they have an interest.
b) they can practise free of charge. This does not mean voluntary in the sense of being somehow amateurish. They can have a contract and be held accountable just as their peers are. The only difference is that the remuneration clause in their contract reads £0.00.
c) they can reskill after they’ve lost their seat. They get paid for four months after losing their seat – and redundancy pay on top of that. And given the very high rate of pay, I’m sure they could find it within their capacity to make it stretch a little further. Certainly ample time to reskill and requalify if necessary.
@Mary Fulton 4.37 pm This is the argument that the status quo is fine. It has some, limited, merit – voters can take such issues into account when they cast their votes. But it does not address the issue of conflict of interest. A voter may not mind if their MP happens to be a consultant for a private medical company. But if that MP’s votes on health issues tend to the benefit of private providers rather than of the country at large, that is wrong, regardless of what their own voters think.
One reason we have got into such a hopeless position in housing in this country is that the private rental market is tilted very heavily towards landlords. In the last Parliament a quarter of the Tory MPs were landlords, and they voted to maintain the interests of landlords rather than those of their tenants. That is wrong regardless of whether the people who voted for those 90 MPs minded or not.
Might it be equitable and more efficient if, when the pay of M Ps was increased, the same proportion of increase were applied to benefit payments, the pay of nurses, teachers etc?
@ Martin Gray and @ Steve Trevethan. Fully agree with you both.
@ Steve Trevethan
Definitely an idea worth exploring
@Steve. No. Your proposal would directly tie MPs’ remuneration to the welfare of a specific subset of the population – thereby causing MPs to have a vested interest in representing just that subset of the population, to the exclusion of everyone else. That directly conflicts with that MPs are there to represent ALL their constituents and also to make legislation to govern the country as a whole, as far as possible representing the interests of ALL UK citizens and visitors etc. (while also considering how what the UK does impacts the rest of the World).
What might be mistaken in M. Ps having a real interest in those sections of the community who have been deliberately. disadvantaged by the imposition of Neoliberal austerity?
Would that fewer M Ps effectively represented the financial/rentier section of our country who have benefited from Neoliberal austerity since 2010. Nurses, doctors, teachers, those on benefit etc. have had their pay reduced since then and so have evidently not been properly represented.
Neoliberal Austerity damages the nation’s economy, enriches the very wealthy, deprives the not very wealthy and wrecks the nation’s infrastructures.
Alas, the current government appears to be intent on its continuation.
How does this demonstrate that a majority of M Ps represent all their constituents?
P S Might our party do something about this deliberate deprivation and damage to our society?
Regarding Rob Parsons’ proposal to prevent MPs voting if there is a financial interest: The big issue with MPs having other jobs isn’t voting: It’s that if they are working X hours on some other trade, that’s X hours that they cannot be doing their MP’s work – and you really want MPs to be working full time as MPs! Preventing them from voting has pretty much no bearing on that: So as a solution it would be almost completely ineffective.
Also, if proposal were enacted, who would vote on the budget? Pretty much everyone in the country – including all MPs – will have a direct financial interest in things like the level of taxation, which would seem to preclude any MP from voting on any measure that impacts tax! And that illustrates a wider problem: That most of us have indirect financial interests in most things. As one example, you cite landlords having a financial interest in housing. Unfortunately, so do tenants. And people paying a mortgage. And anyone who might in the future want to sell their home in order to move house. So, looks like, under your proposals, no MPs would ever be able to vote on anything to do with housing. And so on… 🙂
@Steve: If you believe that certain sections of the community have been badly served by Governments, then the solution in any democracy is to campaign on behalf of those causes, get voters to vote for parties that are more likely to serve those sections of the community, and persuade the Government to do more for the people concerned. Trying to deliberately give MPs strong vested financial interests in supporting the particular causes you like, by setting it up so they get higher pay only if they support your favoured causes is not democratic and would in almost any other context be considered corruption.
After all, personally I strongly feel the Government has done for too little for biodiversity and the environment. Should I therefore be arguing for MPs’ pay rates to be linked to the state of the environment? No, because that would again be anti-democratic. Someone else might think the Government has done too little to support the armed forces. Should they therefore argue for linking MPs’ pay to how effective our military is? Again, no, for the same reason.
I am chair of a small social housing trust, and a fellow trustee happens to be a Labour MP. We are both recorded as non-executive directors (NEDs) at companies house because of the nature of the organisation, and the trust board meets four times a year. We are volunteers, and the MP attends when she can. It’s not her second job, it’s another role – another hat. Should we dismiss her, or are you ok with this because there’s no money involved, provided case work is covered during board meetings? Or can she catch up on the two hours ‘lost’ to being an MP during the day by burning the midnight oil in her own time? Is she free to vote on social housing bills?
I’m also MD of a business that employs 40 people, and hopes to hire more. We already pay a NED and, if another came along with the insight to help us double in size, I wouldn’t care if they were an MP; provided casework didn’t suffer, and they never, never tried to help us by influencing government in our favour.
MPs can have multiple roles, businesses can be ethical, an MP helping a business is helping the country – as long as their MP role doesn’t suffer and they don’t take the piss. Rob is right to suggest rules over dragnets.
Might relating the pay of M Ps to those at the practically functioning heart or society encourage M Ps to be me aware etc of the consequences of their actions and lack of actions?
Recently, and possibly presently, M Ps seem to have enabled increases in their pay which far exceed the pay of those directly responsible for the better functioning of our society. This seems to have been done in the name of Neoliberal austerity which seems, without any tangible validation in the state of so much of our society, to have been adopted. by the major parties, so there is no real electoral choice there.
As our democracy is questionable because it currently harms the less well off to the benefit of the well off, might it seem reasonable to explore other ways of making the delivery phase of our current form of democracy more democratic and so more equitable and efficient?
@Paul 3rd Aug ’24 – 1:34am I would most certainly not suggest the MP should be removed. The whole point of my suggestion is that people should not vote on issues in which they have a “financial” interest – in other words they benefit from it. Your MP should most certainly continue to vote on housing issues.
We expect a lot of our MPs and part of that is that they rise above their personal interests and vote for the common good. Perhaps that is too much to expect but you shouldn’t really be an MP if you are forever considering your personal advantage. It is up to each member to decide how to act. If we can’t have high expectations how do we hold them to account? The issue should be are they doing their parliamentary job effectively, not whether they have a second income stream.