Members’ Paid Directorships and Consultancies

Ian Murray Excerpts

Wednesday 25th February 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hague]

This is a week of remarkable economic news and good international endorsement of the Government, and that is no doubt partly why the Opposition have chosen to debate other matters today. Nevertheless, the issues of transparency and the reputation of the House are important at all times.

[Ian Murray (Edinburgh South) (Lab)]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Hague]

I will give way in a moment.

The reinforcement of transparency and accountability need constant effort, and that is part of what has been happening in recent years. At the end of the last Parliament, as the House knows, agreement was reached on the Parliamentary Standards Act 2009. Since then, more has been done than ever before in Parliament and in government on transparency. We have created a statutory register of lobbyists and appointed the registrar; we are legislating for the recall of MPs; and we have strengthened the rules governing the appointment of Ministers after they leave office to business appointments to cover all appointments or employment they wish to take up within two years of leaving office—there has been a very substantial increase in transparency on Ministers and former Ministers.

[Ian Murray]

rose—

[Andrew Gwynne]

rose—

[Mr Hague]

I shall give way to the hon. Member for Edinburgh South (Ian Murray), who asked first.

[Ian Murray]

The Leader of the House rightly talks about transparency, but may I just push him on that? Can he, and his Government, be wholly transparent with the House and the country by telling us how many jobs, additional to being an MP, he thinks it is acceptable for people in this House to have?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Speaker]

The hon. Gentleman is a very experienced Member of this House. He has made his point, and I think that he has done so with a puckish grin. He knows that I do not need to rule upon it.

[Ian Murray]

rose—

[Mr Speaker]

Mr Murray has a very solemn expression upon his face, which gives the impression at least that he has a serious point of order to raise. I hope that he has.

[Ian Murray]

Further to that point of order, Mr Speaker. For clarity, although “Erskine May” does give direction in this House, I received a complaint from the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority for saying in this House, “I refer Members to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests”, and the complaint was upheld on the basis that I did not say what the interest was. Practically, in this parliamentary term I had to apologise to the House for declaring my interests but not saying what those interests were.

[Mr Speaker]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. [Interruption.] Order. I hope that the House will understand that I cannot be expected to offer Members a tutorial on the matter. People would think it very odd if the Speaker were inclined to do so. [Interruption.] Order. If Members are uncertain and want my advice from the Chair—I do not think that the Leader of the House is in need of my advice on the matter—I say that it is probably better for them to err on the side of caution, and to reveal more rather than less is a very safe course of action. I think that treats of the gravamen of the point of order raised by the right hon. Member for Banbury (Sir Tony Baldry). I have sought to help the House, but I think that I can best help it now by enabling the Leader of the House to continue with his oration.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ian Murray (Edinburgh South) (Lab)]

I should like to refer the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I am an unremunerated director of a supporters co-operative, and as part of the responsibilities of being the chair of that co-operative, I am an unremunerated director of Heart of Midlothian football club. I am also a director of my own business, which I put into hibernation when I was elected to the House. The total amount of money I receive from all those positions is precisely zero.

I hope that I do not get struck by lightning when I say this, but I actually agree with something that the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) said. We are not many days away from the end of this Parliament and we have finally agreed on something. I congratulate him on rightly saying that we must restore people’s faith in politics and in this place. The public are demanding that we do just that, and that is why we are having this debate today; it is not because we are jumping on a passing bandwagon.

Before I was elected to the House, I ran my own businesses, but as soon as I left the stage in 2010 after the returning officer had announced that I was the new Member of Parliament for Edinburgh South, I sold one of the businesses and put the other into hibernation. Why? Because it is a tremendous privilege to be in this place, and every Member should give this full-time job 110% of their time. I was still a councillor at the time, and until the by-election took place and I stopped being a councillor, I donated every single penny of that additional salary to local charities in my constituency.

[Adam Afriyie]

Would the hon. Gentleman take a second job as a Minister or the Chairman of a Select Committee?

[Ian Murray]

That is a completely ridiculous misnomer from Conservative Members. It is a smokescreen to cover up some of the practices that they anticipate doing in this place. Being a Minister or the Chair of a Select Committee is part of the job of being in this place. It is part of the remit of being a Member of Parliament.

[John Glen (Salisbury) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Ian Murray]

I will not give way, but I will say more on that point later, because it is being used as a ridiculous smokescreen in this debate, and it is one that the Prime Minister shamefully trumpeted from the Dispatch Box earlier as well.

There are not enough hours in the day to do the job of a Member of Parliament, Madam Deputy Speaker, and you do not need to take my word for it. You can take it from my partner, my friends, my neighbours and my family—from everyone who does not see me from one weekend to the next because I am doing my job in this place. For Lord Heseltine to say that being an MP is “not a full-time job” simply emphasises how out of touch he is now, just as he was when he was in this place, and just how out of touch the Conservatives are on this issue. Any Member who thinks that the job of an MP is not full time is not doing their job properly, and any candidate standing for election on 7 May who thinks that it will not be a full-time job would be better off standing aside and allowing someone else to do it.

Why do I say that? Because since 2010, I have directly helped more than 12,000 of my constituents, held 800 advice sessions and visited or offered to visit 36,500 households. I get up to 700 e-mails a day. We are ingrained in our local communities because that is what Members of Parliament and elected members at all levels—councillors, Members of the Scottish Parliament, MPs and Members of the European Parliament—should be. We should represent our constituents; that is what we are paid for. The overwhelming majority of MPs work their socks off for their constituents, representing them here, doing the work of Parliament and pushing forward the issues that their constituents care about.

Let us look at the Prime Minister’s response to these questions at Prime Minister’s questions today. He could not have been more exposed on this issue if he had turned up in his infamous holiday Speedos. He was asked by the Leader of the Opposition, not once, not twice, not three times, but six times, how many jobs he thinks a Member of Parliament could have when they are in this place, but he refused to answer. What is he frightened of? Why will he not back us to stop this? To say, as some of the—

[Mr Burley]

rose—

[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.

[Sir Alan Duncan]

rose—

[Ian Murray]

I hope the right hon. Gentleman does not mind, but I have no time to give way

Let me tell the House who needs second jobs, third jobs and fourth jobs. It is the people who have been failed by this Government: the millions of people on zero-hours contracts, who need more than one job; the millions of people in part-time work who need full-time work—they need more than one job; and the millions of people on short-hours contracts in this country, who have been failed by this Government’s failed austerity programme and the so-called “economic recovery”. Those are the people who need to go out to earn additional money, because they cannot make ends meet from the zero-hours contracts, the short-hours contracts and the part-time work they are currently on, and we should be representing those views in this House.

The motion is not perfect, but the Leader of the Opposition said clearly from the Dispatch Box this afternoon, “Let us agree the principle that this is wrong and let us deal with the issues that are in front of us.” If we do not do that, the public perception of this place will drop even further and it will be to the shame of democracy in this United Kingdom.