No 10 has backed away from its plans for limiting MPs’ second jobs after they were rubbished by the head of the Commons committee in charge of the controversy.
In a major U-turn on Tuesday, Boris Johnson suddenly proposed curbing outside work to “within reasonable limits” – ministers then suggesting a limit on either hours or earnings.
But Chris Bryant, the chair of the Commons standards committee – which will draw up firm proposals for a vote – called the ideas “for the birds” and said they would not work.
In response, the prime minister’s spokesman claimed Mr Bryant’s criticisms were targeting an issue that was “not something that we proposed”.
Mr Johnson was “not putting forward a set of proposals for parliament to follow”, he said, adding: “That obviously wouldn’t be right. This is something we want to be delivered on a cross party basis.”
In fact, trade secretary Anne-Marie Trevelyan did propose a limit in hours – suggesting 15-20 a week – while Dominic Raab, the deputy prime minister, backed a cap on earnings.
In his criticisms – known to be shared by many Conservative backbenchers – Mr Bryant asked “how on earth” the parliamentary standards commissioner could police such rules.
“Every MP should throw themself heart and soul into the business of being an MP,” the Labour MP said.
“The whole idea that it’s going to be very easy to come up with some plan in the next few days which says ‘you can do so many hours doing this and so many hours doing that’ is just for the birds, frankly.”
On Wednesday, MPs backed the plans to ban MPs working as parliamentary advisers or consultants, as well as restricting outside work to “reasonable limits”.
However, Labour abstained – arguing the crackdown did not go far enough – suggesting they would not form the basis for a cross-party deal, even before Mr Bryant’s intervention.
The second strand, the ban on parliamentary consultancy, is also in question, after some Conservative MPs told The Independent it would not apply to them.
It’s likely that most of the 48 Tories with consultancy jobs will argue that their outside work is commercial and does not involve advice on parliamentary procedure or votes.
Mr Bryant warned: “I don’t know what counts as a non-parliamentary duty,” questioning whether that might include knocking on doors in an election, or travelling to a constituency.
The standards committee, which includes Tory MPs and independent lay members, will publish an initial report later this month, before a final report at the start of next year.
Mr Johnson’s spokesman called it a “misunderstanding” to interpret Mr Bryant’s comments as a criticism “of what the prime minister put forward”.
He said: “The committee for standards in public life put forward a set of proposals. What the prime minister did is highlight two which he thought were a viable basis for detailed proposals, further work to be done on a cross party basis.
“And that’s now what we’d like to happen.”
