Should MPs be completely banned from having second jobs?
In our latest reader poll, we asked whether MPs should be banned from having second jobs.
52.7 per cent said that yes, in all cases MPs should be completely banned from working outside their parliamentary role.
39 per cent said that in most cases this should be banned, but there were a few exceptions; for example MPs who needed to continue practising as GPs for a few hours a week in order to avoid being struck off.
Only eight per cent of respondents think that MPs should be allowed to have any second job they choose.
The issue has made headlines after MPs, and former foreign secretaries, Jack Straw and Malcolm Rifkind were secretly filmed offering their services to a fake private company for cash.
Ruby Stockham is a staff writer at Left Foot Forward. Follow her on Twitter
One Response to “Left Foot Forward poll: vast majority think MPs should be banned from having paid directorships and consultancies”
Faerieson
Any claimed relevance of ‘worthwhile’ business ‘experience’ is almost entirely a distraction. Jack Straw and Malcolm Rifkind thought that they were on the very cusp of being able to decide to compromise any (pretended) claimed political ideal that they may once have held. Whatever their planned commitments to the bogus Chinese businessman might eventually have become, a political inside track was already plainly on offer.
Straw stated that he, “operated under the radar,” in order to, “change EU regulations.” But to how damning an end?
Rifkind and Straw and those like them are the potential means by which our precious NHS might well fall! There can be no ‘Code of Conduct’ that will protect against Parliamentary corruption.