Boris Johnson trousered £21,800 per hour as MPs second job earnings disclosed
Boris Johnson has raked in £21,800 per hour for lucrative work outside Parliament, new analysis shows.
The shamed ex-PM topped the list of MPs hoovering up cash through second jobs on top of their £86,584-a-year basic salary.
MPs can hold second jobs but they must declare additional income, as well as gifts, donations and shareholdings.
Moonlighting MPs have an average wage of £233 per hour in this Parliament, according to Sky News analysis of data politicians provide to Commons authorities. The typical rate is 17 times the national average and 22 times higher than the minimum hourly wage.
Mr Johnson has since quit Parliament, which means he no longer has to record his earnings. Before he stood down, he registered more than £5million since leaving No10, including a string of highly-paid speeches and a £510,000 advance to write his memoir.
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His successor Liz Truss, who lasted only 49 days in No10, earned £15,000 an hour through speaking gigs - the highest hourly rate of any sitting MP.
Ms Truss has made a string of lucrative speeches, including an £80,000 address in Taiwan in May about the threat from China.
Liz Truss has earned significant sums for speeches (PA)Scottish Tory leader Douglas Ross clocked up the highest number of hours outside parliament - spending 3,869 hours as a football referee since the last election.
Tory Sir Geoffrey Cox did the most work in the private sector, racking up 2,565 hours in his job as a barrister. He has earned £2.4million since the 2019 election.
The Labour MP conducting the most work outside Parliament is Shadow Foreign Secretary David Lammy, who worked around 1,000 hours beyond his parliamentary role. He has previously said he put some of the earnings towards paying his staff.
Keir Starmer has previously backed a crackdown on second jobs with some exceptions, such as writing political books and those who need to keep their professional skills topped up such as MPs who are doctors and nurses.
Extra work by MPs was thrown into the spotlight following the scandal over former Cabinet Minister Owen Paterson, who was found to have broken Parliament's ban on paid lobbying.
Mr Johnson, who was PM during the scandal, initially said there should be "reasonable limits" on outside work but later dropped plans to cap MPs’ hours or pay from their second jobs.
Education Secretary Gillian Keegan, who hasn't earned any money from second jobs, dismissed the figures as "just a small number of people" who were "getting paid an awful lot" to give speeches.
Commons Health Committee chairman Steve Brine, who worked 497 hours in second jobs during this Parliament on an average of £200 per hour, warned against "smearing MPs".
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He told Sky News: "I'm focused on my constituents, I focus on chairing my select committee and I always have [been].
"I think you should be very careful about smearing MPs and making out that MPs are not focusing on their jobs - 99.9% of MPs I've met in Westminster are focused on doing their job and doing the right thing. Be very careful before you run our profession into the ground."
Downing Street said MPs were expected to focus on serving their constituents.
The PM's official spokesman said: "Whilst there are set rules that enable MPs to take other roles if they see fit, their primary focus must always be on serving their constituents, and of course it will be their constituents who decide whether they have done a good job."
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