Ex-PM Liz Truss earned £20k an hour since leaving Number 10
MPs are earning hundreds of pounds per hour in second jobs outside of their parliamentary roles.
Some are even earning up to thousands per hour with former Conservative MP Boris Johnson earning an average of £21,800 an hour.
In a table released by Sky News showing Westminster Accounts, data reveals how many hours each MP has worked in second jobs and the equivalent hourly rate they have received.
Mr Johnson was paid the equivalent of £51,000 per hour from publishers Harpers Collins.
Former Prime Minister Liz Truss earnt an average of £15,700 per hour, with £20,000 being her highest earnings per hour for a speech in Taiwan.
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She was paid nearly 1,500 times’ the UK average hourly wage for her insights into global diplomacy.
The average wage for MPs with second jobs was revealed as £233 per hour, which is 17 times the national average and more than 22 times higher than the minimum hourly wage.
Also on the list of high earners was Alok Sharma, Theresa May, Fiona Bruce, Sajid Javid, Julian Smith, Greg Clark, Ian Blackford and Michael Gove.
The accounts project was produced in association with media company Tortoise, which analysed the data provided by MPs on how much time they have worked on second jobs in this parliament.
The three-and-a-half year period has shown many MPs had no other earnings from a second job.
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The leader of the Conservatives in the Scottish Parliament, Douglas Ross, was found to have worked the most hours outside his work as a backbench MP.
He recorded working 3,869 hours on top of his role as an MP as a member of the Scottish parliament and as a referee for the Scottish Football Association,
Former SNP Westminster leader Ian Blackford – who earned over £38,000 for 31 hours’ work in this parliament told Sky News there was a “legitimate debate” to be had about MPs’ outside earnings.
He said: ”You have seen obviously the likes of Boris Johnson and Liz Truss earn eyewatering sums of money on the speaking circuit, benefiting from the position that they had as prime minister, and I think rightly people are appalled at that kind of behaviour.
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“I think it is important that we can trust our politicians and I think people have to look very carefully at what they do.
“Being an MP is a very important job, it is a full-time job.
“Of course, at the end of the day you are accountable to your electorate when you stand in front of them at the next election.
“I think most MPs do work very hard, it is an all-consuming job.
“But absolutely, let’s make sure that there is full transparency on this, that people are not abusing the privileges that are put in them as members of parliament.”
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