UK politics live: standards watchdog calls for rapid action to limit MPs’ time on second jobs

Former MI5 chief now leading Committee on Standards in Public Life says existing proposals mean there is no need for lengthy inquiry

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The UK’s most prominent standards watchdog has urged the government to act rapidly to address concerns about MPs’ second jobs.

In an interview with the Today programme, Lord Evans, the former MI5 boss who now chairs the Committee on Standards in Public Life, said that there was no need for a lengthy review of what needed to be done because proposals were already “on the table”. He told the programme:

I’ve been slightly slightly frustrated over the last few days at people calling for a review of MPs’ second jobs, and this and that. Our committee … has made recommendations on a number of these areas, including only last week. Those are on the table. They offer a way forward now, which means that we can be confident that our standards bodies are independent, that our public life is being defended, and we don’t need to set up a royal commission or a public inquiry.

At the moment, as there is such an upwelling of public concern on standards issues, there is an opportunity to look at what is already on the table, what has already been researched, what we’ve consulted widely on.

They recognised that there were certain jobs that it was right and appropriate that MPs should be able to hold, in addition to their main responsibilities. But we recommended that MP should not accept any paid work to provide services such as parliamentary strategists or advisers or consultants, because that was in tension with their main job.

And we said that the critical thing was that nothing that an MP does should get in the way of their ability to work in support of their constituents. So the amount of work that they do, the sort of work, needs to be judged against that. If somebody is spending a huge amount of their time on a second job, then they can’t be made maintaining the support for their constituents.

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