Osborne picks Budget Day to sneakily reveal he’s on £650k for a one-day week!
And he also discloses he’s raked in £786k for just 14 speeches
GEORGE osborne will pocket £650,000 for working one day a week at an American financial giant, it was revealed last night.
As attention was turned to the Budget, officials slipped out the news that the former chancellor’s earnings since he was sacked by Theresa May will be taken to £1.6million.
on top of being paid £13,542 a day for four days a month by Blackrock, Mr osborne will receive a number of shares in the world’s largest asset manager.
The 45-year-old, who has refused to step down as an MP, has also earned £786,450 from 14 speeches given mostly to banks and other City institutions.
His lucrative speaking engagements included £51,082 for addressing a conference in Antwerp last month when he should have been taking part in a key vote on Brexit in the Commons.
Details of Mr osborne’s earnings were published on the Commons website yesterday as attention was diverted to his successor’s first Budget. Blackrock had announced Mr osborne’s appointment on the day of US President Donald Trump’s inauguration in January.
The Whitehall appointments watchdog has been under pressure to explain why it waved through the job without objection since it was revealed that Mr osborne met the firm’s executives five times in his last two years at the Treasury. The final meeting came last July, days before Mrs May sacked him.
Mr osborne effectively now has five jobs including his parliamentary role.
As well as his Blackrock job and after-dinner speaking engagements, he has accepted a £120,212a-year academic position as the first ever Kissinger Fellow at the Washington DC-based McCain Institute for International Leadership. The fee includes his pay as well as travel and accommodation. Mr osborne is also chairman of the Northern Powerhouse Partnership, a body promoting his cornerstone economic policies for the north of england.
on February 7 Mr osborne broke a three-line whip on the Brexit Bill to make a speech in Belgium. As MPs took part in the crucial vote on triggering Article 50, he was 200 miles away in Antwerp, where he had been invited to address a conference about Brexit.
Last month Mr osborne, who earns £75,000 as an MP, defended taking on additional work as part of his ‘varied and interesting’ contribution to national life.
He said: ‘I was Chancellor of the exchequer working seven days a week, and now I’m a backbench MP, I made a decision to remain in politics and public life because I wanted to go on contributing to the discussion about helping to improve our country.’
Acoba, the watchdog supposed to examine appointments for potential conflicts of interest, gave Mr osborne permission to take the job at Blackrock in January. It previously approved a job for his former aide, rupert Harrison.
The committee initially told Mr osborne it had ‘no concerns’ about the post because he had made no policy decisions relating to the firm’s interests. But it has since corrected the letter to admit that as chancellor he did make decisions affecting the asset management industry.
Media reports from three years ago show that Blackrock gleefully greeted Mr osborne’s pension reforms, which gave savers control over their retirement pots. It said it was ‘uniquely positioned’ to take advantage.
Acoba, the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments, is supposed to vet ministers and senior civil servants when they take jobs in the private sector after leaving office. However, it has looked at more than 370 appointments over the past eight years without blocking a single one.
Mr osborne, who masterminded the remain campaign during the EU referendum, was ditched by Mrs May as soon as she took over as Prime Minister. In a rare Commons appearance last month, he attacked her over Brexit and warned he would ‘fight’ the Government over curbing immigration.
Mr osborne yesterday watched Mr Hammond’s Budget from the backbenches.