Tory MP is ‘too busy’ to declare £400k pay

Off the wagon: The ring and handle, pictured left, suggest the ancient charioteer may have been drunk A MILLIONAIRE Tory MP who tried to claim 49p in expenses for milk had to apologise yesterday for neglecting to declare more than £400,000 in outside earnings.

Barrister Geoffrey Cox was ordered to say sorry to MPs for a ‘serious breach’ of parliamentary rules after failing to declare the bumper income last year.

But – despite the ‘significant’ scale of the offence – the Torridge and West Devon MP faced no further sanction from Parliament’s standard’s committee, of which he used to be a member.

Mr Cox is one of the highest earning MPs at Westminster, raking in more than £800,000 a year in barrister’s fees on top of his £74,000 salary.

Between January and August last year he received 11 payments totalling more than £400,000, which related to hundreds of hours of work.

MPs are supposed to declare all earnings over £66.

Mr Cox issued a ‘sincere and fullhearted’ apology to MPs. In evidence to parliament’s sleaze watchdog, he blamed the sudden retirement of the head clerk at his barrister chambers for the ‘oversight’.

Labour MP John Mann said: ‘When a member of the committee breaches the rules, they should be held up for higher sanctions, not a slap on the wrist.’