MPs earn £17.1m from outside jobs since 2019 – Tory MPs earning £15.4m

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UK MPs have earned £17.1million from their work outside parliament since the 2019 election, it has been learned, with the vast majority being made up of Tory MPs.

A total of £15.2million has been earned by Tory MPs on top of their salaries during parliament, according to a survey by Sky News and Tortoise Media.

Labour MPs earned a total of £1.2m from second jobs and working outside parliament, with Liberal Democrat MPs earning a further £171,000 and SNP MPs an additional £149,000 .

About two-thirds of the extra revenue was made by just 20 MPs, with the Tories accounting for 17 of the top 20 earners.

Former Tory Prime Minister Theresa May, who is entry into the lucrative international speaking circuit, has won the highest amount. She earned just over £2,550,000 on top of her £84,000 salary during this Parliament.

Sir Geoffrey Cox was the second highest earner, taking in just over £2,191,000 £ for his legal work. The Tory MP said there was "no conflict of interest between my work as a lawyer and my role as an MP".

The fictional Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, David Lammy, was his party's biggest earner, earning just over £202,000 from outside work, including over £87,000 from his work on LBC Radio.

Some reforms should apply later this year after the government backed measures to ban MPs from earning money through political activities or parliamentary consultancy work in a bid to avoid lobbying scandals.

But Hannah White, director of the Institute for Government think tank, said the changes were "pretty minimal", adding: "There is no real incentive for the ruling Conservative Party to push their MPs to change anything. thing like that."

Sir Keir Starmer said he wanted to see d "stricter" rules to restrict second jobs - but defended Mr Lammy's outside work and insisted he should forge a cross-party agreement on the changes.

" David does a lot of media work," he told Sky News' Sophy Ridge on Sunday. "Basically there's a million miles between someone advising a company on strategy and someone writing a book."

Labour had previously said it wanted to ban second jobs with only 'limited exemptions', but Sir Keir has suggested his party and the Commons will have to come to terms with...