You can’t pass this off as corruption

HALF a century ago, the Tory Party at Westminster was regarded as a rich man’s club and the Labour Party as full of people sponsored by the Trade Unions. If we want those days to return then all we have to do is ban second jobs for MPs so that the only people who want to be there are those so rich that the salary is irrelevant or so under-achieving that they think it a fortune.

The current fuss about Geoffrey Cox seems to centre on the size of his earnings rather than the principle of them.

So he interrupted a discussion with the Virgin Islands to go to vote? Well, I would rather it that way around than the other. He is alleged to have clocked up 10, 700 hours over 12 years.

That amounts to less than two-and-a-half hours a day – and what other profession refuses its employees two-and-a-half hours of private time after they leave the office or at weekends?

We need hugely successful lawyers such as Geoffrey Cox. It was he, in case readers of this paper have forgotten, who as Attorney General, gave the lie to that massively false claim by Theresa May that under her deal with the EU, parts of the UK would not be left in the Customs Union and Cox who, from the government benches, damningly said her revised deal made no difference.

WITHOUT that bold and truthful statement, we would still be under the EU yoke. Now there is even a confected fuss about passes for former members. Believe me, as one who has one, it is difficult to misuse. We are not allowed in Members Only areas so how we can lobby MPs or ministers I cannot imagine. We are not allowed unaccompanied in any of the bars and restaurants but we are allowed in the canteen used by everyone else, including secretaries, researchers etc. I use my pass about four times a year to meet with old colleagues or to use the souvenir shop for the kids in pantomime. Corruption, my foot!