Westminster Hall
1 July 2026
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Westminster Hall House of Commons
00:22 - 00:58
Speaker 2
Order. Before I call Richard Burgon, I would like to make a point to members contributing to this morning's debate. First, I remind members to be careful if they choose to refer to other members in this debate. If you wish to refer to a specific member, you should have given them notice, and I would appreciate it if you mention it absolutely this in your remarks as well as ensuring that your comments are, of course, as always, appropriate. I call Richard Burgon to move the motion.
00:58 - 03:12
Speaker 1
Thank you, and it's a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr. Weston, and I beg to move this House has considered the potential merits of a prohibition of second jobs for honorable members. Now, I'm delighted to have secured this debate today, but let's be totally honest from the start. Confidence in our politics has collapsed. People look at Westminster and they see a political system increasingly disconnected from their lives. They see stories about freebies, dodgy donations, and so-called gifts.
And they see politicians collecting six-figure sums from second jobs. They know that this system isn't working for them, and it chips away at the public's trust in Parliament. It damages their confidence in democracy. So, if we want politics to serve the people, not elite interests, then we're going to have to take bold action. And that's why I've called this debate today.
Banning MPs' second jobs is one of the key steps to restore trust in politics. And I do hope that the incoming Prime Minister, when giving their speech on the steps of Downing Street in the coming weeks, commits to real action to clean up our politics, because there are very dangerous forces out there that want to take advantage of public distrust to roll back basic democratic norms, as we have seen in the United States. But before I turn to why we must ban MPs' second jobs, I want to look at the scale of the problem. All the figures I reference today are from Sky News's Westminster Accounts, a database compiled from the register of members' interests. And I commend the work done by those journalists.
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