MPs 2nd Jobs.

I watched Question Time* for the first time in months last night, the panellists started talking about MPs with second jobs, with a lot of them thinking that it is a very bad thing to have one. Hilary Benn stated that he personally ddn't have a second job as an MP and never had.

This is obviously untrue seeing as he is the Secretary of State for the Environment, Food & Rural Affairs as well as being the MP for Leeds Central.

Anyone who does think that being an MP is a full time job that cannot be supplemented by outside earnings really should start by demanding that the executive is separated from the legislature because the biggest employer of MPs is the government of the day. Being a minister is a more direct conflict of interest with being an MP than almost any other role.

I don't personally think that an MP's job is that hard to do if they restrict themselves to their core function of scrutinising legislation rather than acting as social workers to their contituents in order to get re-elected.


* Frank Skinner is one of the few comedians on the show who didn't make a fool of himself. Although I thought his remark that he had always been a Labour supporter because he thought that it was the party that Jesus would support was odd. Surely with the beard and the sandals Jesus would have been a Lib Dem.