Six-jobs George pockets £150k for 4 speeches
GEORGE Osborne has earned another £150,000 for making only four speeches, it emerged last night.
Last month, the former chancellor picked up £155,136 for a total of just 11 hours’ work.
It means he has registered payments of nearly £1million for making 18 speeches since September.
Mr Osborne – who was sacked by Theresa May after June’s EU referendum – has been heavily criticised for taking a string of lucrative jobs while still a backbench MP.
In total, the 45-year-old has declared prospective earnings of more than £1.7million in the last seven months.
The array of outside appointments has sparked accusations that he is abandoning his constituents in Tatton, Cheshire, and is incapable of effectively fulfilling his responsibilities as an MP.
Most controversially, last month he was named the new editor of the London Evening Standard newspaper, a role he is expected to formally take up in the coming weeks.
He is also an economic adviser to US financial giant BlackRock. For one day a week he will be paid £650,000 a year.
He is also a Kissinger Fellow at the McCain Institute for International Leadership, in Washington DC, for which he is paid £120,212.
Between September 27 and April 10 Mr Osborne has earned £941,586 from speech-making, mostly to banks.
According to declarations in the House of Commons Register of Members’ Interests, these have required him to work for a total of 46-and-a-half hours.
The latest declaration shows that Mr Osborne will receive a payment of £51,842 for a speech to the New York University in Abu Dhabi on
‘He should resign’
March 4. He will also be paid £51,754 for two speeches to the Magyar Nemzeti Bank in Budapest on March 1 and 2.
In addition, he will earn £51,540 from an investment management company, Insight Investment, for a speech in London on March 17.
Meanwhile, his London Evening Standard salary has not yet been announced, but is expected to be six figures.
Mr Osborne has defended taking on additional work on top of his £75,000 MP’s pay packet, claiming it is part of his ‘varied’ contribution to national life.
He also has an unpaid role as chairman of the Northern Powerhouse Partnership.
However, he is facing a string of inquiries into his decision to edit the London Evening Standard while remaining an MP, which has reignited the debate about MPs’ second jobs.
Mr Osborne accepted the newspaper role without waiting for approval from the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments – which vets jobs taken by ex-ministers.
Lord Bew, chairman of the committee on standards in public life, has he was ‘uncomfortable’ with the appointment, and his committee is to hold a wider probe into second jobs.
The Commons privileges committee is also looking at the issue of second jobs in general.
Sir Alistair Graham, former chairman of the committee on standards in public life, said of the former chancellor last month: ‘It is incredible he thinks he can do all these jobs and serve his constituents properly.
‘He should resign.’