MPs face ban on second jobs after Osborne scandal

Anger as Tory toff takes on yet another job

FIVE-JOBS George Osborne’s latest role may trigger a clampdown on MPs’ outside earnings.

The ex-chancellor’s plan to remain as MP for Tatton in Cheshire while editing London’s Evening Standard newspaper has provoked fury.

The watchdog monitoring MPs may look at his appointment to see if rules have been broken.

Osborne will pocket an estimated £250,000 a year running the free paper on top of his £75,000 MP salary.

He is Parliament’s highestearning MP, also making £650,000 a year for one day a week at City investment firm BlackRock, £120,000 a year for research and £800,000 in the past six months from speeches.

Tory colleague Iain Duncan Smith has compared him to Gordon Gekko, from the film Wall Street, who says “greed is good”.

Labour MP Chuka Umunna said: “On no level is this defensible.”

Two Parliamentary committees are looking at MPs’ second jobs.

Lord Bew, chief of the committee for Standards in Public Life, said: “We have not ruled out MPs having second jobs, quite deliberately, up until now, but we now have to look again at our rules.

“We are going to discuss whether our rules on second jobs need to be changed in light of this.

“We had something that up to a degree worked. It now seems to be getting into rockier waters.”

Lord Bew added that his case raised the “issue of how much time MPs have to devote to their parliamentary work”.

SNP MP Tommy Sheppard, who sits on the Committee on Standards, insisted there was “broad agreement” that an additional job “must be something that demonstrably doesn’t prevent you doing your first job as an MP”.

He said: “You cannot edit the Evening Standard and represent your constituents in any meaningful sense.

“How many votes would you miss in the Commons, for example? It beggars belief.” But ex-PM Tony Blair defended Osborne, saying: “I think it’s a great thing for the Evening Standard, why not?

“He is a highly capable guy and it should make politics more interesting.”

So far, 165,500 people have signed an online petition calling for Osborne to quit as an MP.