A revamp of MPs’ terms – including a pay rise, paid maternity leave and work shadowing schemes – would help the transition
At the very highest level, it consumes every waking hour, sometimes to the point of wrecking marriages, lives and health. Even on the lowest rung of the ladder, being a good backbench MP is not the sort of job from which you clock off at 5pm sharp, let alone bunk off for an afternoon. Or at least, it shouldn’t be.
The only surprising thing about this week’s renewed demands for a ban on MPs taking second jobs as political consultants is that it took public outrage over Owen Paterson’s paid lobbying for the penny to drop. The Scottish and Welsh parliaments already forbid this particular kind of moonlighting, so why not Westminster? Ban dubious corporate gigs for politicians tomorrow, and before long it will seem bizarre that an arrangement so obviously open to abuse – under which MPs can work as consultants so long as they don’t actually lobby on behalf of their clients – was ever allowed. If a company really values an MP for their personal knowledge and skills, rather than for their ability to have a word in the right ear, then it can hire them a decent interval after they’ve left.
