Members’ Paid Directorships and Consultancies

Debate between Stephen Doughty and Ian Murray

Wednesday 25th February 2015 Commons Chamber

[Ian Murray]

I am not giving way. Some Government Members say that these jobs bring additional flavour and experience to this place, but I do not need to have a £250,000 non-executive directorship of a major business to tell me what my constituents want me to bring to the Floor of this House. I know what my constituents want me to bring to the Floor of this House because I ask them—I knock on their doors, I do surgeries, and I put out questionnaires and surveys. That is how we in this House know what the public are thinking, and to think otherwise is just bonkers.

[Stephen Doughty (Cardiff South and Penarth) (Lab/Co-op)]

My hon. Friend is making an extremely strong speech. Does he not find it strange, as I do, that when we look through the Register of Members’ Financial Interests we find that a lot of those directorships and consultancies involve giving advice and time out of this place and are not about bringing expertise into it, although that was the argument being made by so many Government Members?

[Ian Murray]

Absolutely, and that is the key point; we need to get money and lobbying out of politics. When we had the opportunity to put through a strong lobbying Bill, the raison d’être of the Government was to hit the charities which want to tell us to change public policy and not the very lobbyists they have at the heart of Downing street and of No. 10.

Let me just deal with this issue about shadow Ministers and Ministers. Those roles are an integral part of being a Member of Parliament. If Government Members are suggesting that Members of Parliament should not take those roles, they are completely missing the point of what the public are asking us to do. The Prime Minister said exactly the same from—[Interruption.] Madam Deputy Speaker, if the hon. Member for Cannock Chase (Mr Burley) got £5 every time he chuntered in this place, he would not need any outside interests from this place. A better view of the world outside would be to listen to what the public are saying to us. We do not need to have highly paid second or third jobs to tell us that, and that is what the public are telling us to do.