Boris Johnson has been bounced into proposing a ban on MPs working as paid political consultants or lobbyists in an attempt to close down a sleaze scandal that has dominated Westminster politics for the past fortnight.
The UK prime minister made the announcement on Twitter, just as Sir Keir Starmer, the leader of the opposition Labour party, was about to start a press conference to lay out similar plans following days of negative headlines about outside interests of MPs.
Labour will table a motion in the House of Commons on Wednesday to bar MPs from holding second jobs with some “very limited” exceptions.
Downing Street was debating how to respond to the motion on Tuesday evening but was expected to amend it to more closely reflect the prime minister’s proposals. A senior Tory official said the government would seek to “strengthen” the opposition’s motion.
Johnson said in his tweet that he had written to the Commons’ Speaker to propose cross-party reforms to the standards system in Parliament.
The prime minister’s recommendations include an update to the MPs’ code of conduct and a ban on MPs working as paid consultants or lobbyists. He said it was important that MPs who prioritise outside interests over their constituents should be “investigated and appropriately punished”.
But Johnson’s proposals do not rule out MPs taking up paid directorships or acting as consultants on matters that are not deemed political. One well-placed Whitehall official pointed out there was “an awful lot of wriggle room on what define[d] political consultancy”.
In 2018, the Committee on Standards in Public Life, the anti-corruption watchdog, recommended that MPs should not undertake outside employment as a “parliamentary strategist, adviser or consultant”. However, it noted at the time that only a “handful of MPs” still held such positions.
Johnson himself has received £4.3m from outside interests while an elected politician, but this has been through speeches and books rather than through advisory work.
The prime minister’s intervention was timed to derail Starmer’s attempt to seize the political initiative with his demand to stop the “revolving door” between government and companies regulated by the state. But the Labour leader described Johnson’s move as a “significant victory” for the opposition party.
Westminster has been convulsed by a sleaze scandal since Tory MPs two weeks ago voted, at the behest of Johnson, to overhaul the system of parliamentary standards.
The controversial parliamentary manoeuvre was an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to rescue fellow Tory MP and former minister Owen Paterson, who the parliamentary standards watchdog found had broken lobbying rules in an “egregious case of paid advocacy” while working as a paid consultant for two companies.
After an embarrassing government U-turn led to Paterson’s resignation, the focus of media scrutiny shifted to second jobs held by other Tory MPs, including Sir Geoffrey Cox. The former attorney-general has come under scrutiny over his role advising a tax haven.
Theresa May, the former Tory prime minister, accused Johnson of “damaging parliament” during a Commons debate on the issue on Tuesday afternoon.
Jacob Rees-Mogg, the leader of the House of Commons, admitted that the attempt to rescue Paterson was a “serious mistake”. Speaking on the ConservativeHome podcast, Rees-Mogg said he had personally encouraged the prime minister “to go down this route, and I was wrong. I made a mistake.”
Asked by a Labour MP in the Commons later how the government had misjudged the situation, Rees-Mogg said ministers had been swayed by the suicide of Paterson’s wife.
