Members’ Paid Directorships and Consultancies

Liz McInnes Excerpts

Wednesday 25th February 2015 Commons Chamber

[Liz McInnes (Heywood and Middleton) (Lab)]

I speak as a new Member of Parliament and a proud trade unionist. I also went to a school that did not have a debating society, so I have no idea what the standard of debate is compared with the standard of the debating society at whatever school the right hon. Member for Rutland and Melton (Sir Alan Duncan) went to.

One thing that has surprised me since I became an MP is the number of people back home who have asked me “Are you still working in the NHS?” I used to work as a health care scientist in the national health service before I was elected. There is a real perception out there that being an MP is not a full-time job, which is why people are asking me that question. The practice among some MPs of taking paid directorships and consultant roles exacerbates the belief that being an MP is something that someone can do in their spare time when they are not flitting around doing their other well-paid part-time jobs. I no longer work in the national health service. There is absolutely no way that I could hold down a responsible job, with people’s lives and health depending on what I did, and fulfil the responsibilities of my new role as an MP. To be perfectly honest, I do not understand how anyone finds the time to do anything outside their role as an MP, although I am prepared to accept that that may reflect the fact that I am new and have a lot to learn, and that a general election is looming.

People in my constituency are baffled by recent assertions that £67,000 a year is not enough for an MP to live on. Figures were recently published showing my constituency was the second-worst constituency in the north-west for the payment of the living wage. The worst area is Blackpool North and Cleveleys, where 42.1% of workers are paid less than the living wage. In my constituency, 39.8% of local workers are paid less than the living wage, with women faring particularly badly. Over half of them—53.9%—are paid less than the living wage, which is £7.85 an hour, which amounts to £314 a week for a 40-hour week, or £16,328 a year before tax. I am sure that the 39.8% of people in Heywood and Middleton who receive less than that—and, indeed, all those people existing on the average wage in the UK—will be absolutely baffled as to why MPs on £67,000 a year need to have a second paid job.

We owe it to our constituents, and to the people who elected us, to do our job as an MP properly and effectively, to make it our only employment, and to concentrate fully on it—not to be distracted by paid roles as consultants and directors, which feeds the impression that being an MP is a part-time job—[Interruption.]

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. Will the hon. Lady sit down for a moment? I will stop the clock. I am getting a bit fed up with Members, including Whips, shouting across the Dispatch Box at Members who are speaking.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Actually, Mr Wishart, I told them off at that point as well, and made them stop, so you could conclude your speech. I was just about to say that that goes for both sides. There are strongly held views: express them strongly when you have the floor, but please do not shout at one another. Liz McInnes.

[Liz McInnes]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I want to end by quoting one of my constituents, Father Paul Daly, who said to me:

“When I vote in May, I will want a full-time MP who does not feel so hard-done by on a mere 67 grand a year plus expenses that they have to go looking for part-time work at a few extra thousand quid a day.

I don’t mind MPs getting rewarded for writing the odd article, but when MPs are earning more outside their parliamentary duties than within them then something is very wrong.”

I think that Father Daly speaks for the majority of people in their perceptions of MPs. That criticism from a member of the clergy brings home to us what people really think of us. This is a moral issue, and it is right that the Church should express its views in that way. We owe it to all our constituents, believers and non-believers alike, to conduct ourselves in an honourable fashion and to concentrate on the role to which we have been elected and which we should be proud to perform.