Senior Tory MP Geoffrey Cox starts £400k-a-year job at City law firm
Senior Tory Geoffrey Cox has revealed he has started a £400,000-a-year job at a City law firm as parliament prepares to discuss whether MPs should be able to have lucrative second jobs.
Cox, a former attorney general, started his new role at multinational law firm Withers LLP on 1 November and will be working 41 hours per month in the role, according to the MPs’ register of interests.
The records show he also received more than £410,000 for part-time work he did for the firm between January and July of this year.
It comes as parliament will today debate standards in parliament amid the ongoing Tory sleaze scandal after Owen Paterson’s resignation.
The debate will focus on a wild 24 hours in Westminster last week when Tory backbenchers and the government rammed through votes to veto Paterson’s proposed 30-day suspension – for his role as a £100,000 lobbyist for two private firms – and dismantle the standards process for MPs.
Boris Johnson U-turned in the face of a fierce backlash just 24 hours later and the North Shropshire MP resigned soon after.
Former Conservative Prime Minister John Major, whose government was blighted by sleaze and corruption scandals, said Johnson’s handling of the Paterson case was “shameful” and that there’s “a general whiff of ‘we are the masters now’ about [the government’s] behaviour”.
The affair has caused some in Westminster to question whether MPs should be allowed to take on high paying second jobs, whether they involve lobbying or not.
Speaker of the House of Commons Sir Lindsay Hoyle is expected to make an intervention in today’s debate, with the Sunday Times reporting that he will likely propose his own review of MPs standards rules.
It is expected that much of the debate will be around whether MPs should be able to hold well-paid secondary jobs, with international trade secretary Anne-Marie Trevelyan today telling Sky News that “across the board, I don’t think we should have a removal of the ability to maintain a second job, because it brings a richness to our role as members of parliament”.
Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer last night said Johnson “must begin to clean out the filthy Augean stable he has created”.
“The country is yet to hear a word of contrition over his attempts to create one rule for him and his friends and another for everyone else,” Starmer said.
Starmer stopped short of saying MPs should not hold second jobs during a BBC interview yesterday, but said he would “ban anyone who holds ministerial office from selling themselves to companies that want to write legislation in their own interests”.