MPs were treated here less as people who might bring useful outside experience than as public servants whose attention should belong wholly to the job: Yes won by nearly three to one. The result was emphatic, but the argument behind it was more absolute still.
The top-rated Yes voices framed the issue as duty rather than regulation. “They have a duty to the entire country and to their constituents,” one argued, while others said outside work leaves too little time to understand constituents, and that an MP should have “nothing else other than their elected role”; several wanted to go beyond the question, towards term limits and cooling-off bans for former MPs.
No voters made the case for guardrails, not laissez-faire. The floor’s strongest No argument warned that a blanket ban could turn politics into “a self-contained profession”, while another said, “We need mps to understand the workings of business”; others proposed hours, attendance and voting requirements, tighter scrutiny of charities, pressure groups, unions, assets and donations, or an hourly pay model. The two sides were often answering different questions: Yes was concerned with divided loyalty and perceived gravy trains, No with preserving experience while policing conflicts.
That distinction places the vote inside the wider argument about trust in institutions and the professionalisation of politics. Yet the most specific finding was that even some Yes voters distrusted the permitted exceptions, while the No case struggled to make regulation sound as morally clean as prohibition; one reply dismissed advisory work as not “working in the real world”.
This was a self-selected online chamber, not a national poll, but its message was unusually plain: MPs’ outside lives were heard less as an asset than as a breach of concentration.
17 Opinions
It’s no good banning second jobs without also acting on political donations, which seem to be the biggest influence on MP behaviour.
How many MPs are actively involved in charities, political pressure groups, unions, who are just as distracted and potentially conflicted, but face no scrutiny here? How about those with significant shareholding / assets? Is the MP making surprisingly lucky stock picks free from scrutiny? If you want to restrict third-party distraction and influence, you need to do it evenly for all channels, not just pick on the board seats.
Should not be banned as we may lose potential but regulated so that there is a minimum time , attendance and votes expected
Too many of them have never had a proper job in their life to begin with, yet they get these second jobs on the back of their time in political office. Becoming a politician shouldn't be a career path and a way to line their pockets. They are paid well enough for being MPs. That should be their full-time job.
Yes, obviously. I’d go even further and prevent ex-MPs from holding any kind of paid advisory or operational role for a good number of years afterwards. Provide them with a generous retirement instead.
YES They're already getting paid over the average wage & then there's all the 'expenses' on top they get to.. They employed by us the tax paying public to do a job, that's what they should do and nothing else. Today to many MP's look on being an MP as being a second job & would rather spend time earning obscene amounts of money doing other things first...
We need mps to understand the workings of business. Also keep up to date with it.
MP is full time job. If they need more money then they should resign and find another career. Also It should be a temporary job, no longer than two terms. Finally, PM should not be at the same time a member of government, legislative power should not mix with executive branch.
We all benefit when legislatures are populated by people who have built careers, businesses, institutions or expertise outside politics. A blanket ban on second jobs risks turning political office into a self-contained profession, narrowing the experience from which legislators are drawn. Provided conflicts of interest and abuses of office are tightly regulated, retaining meaningful links with life beyond politics makes for better representation and better government.
An MP should not have time to commit to anything else other than their elected role. Is they have it is clear then they are not working hard enough. I mean real work, not slamming pimms on the westminster patio lauging while the country burns.