I think there is certainly a case for baring MPs from consultancy gigs where they are effectively being paid for influence. It gets trickier with some professions needing a certain number of hours to “stay current”. Who’s going to take a worse paid job which guarantees they can’t return to their old career if they lose the next election?
I’d prefer paying MPs and ministers more but with the same sort of anti corruption approaches they have in Singapore. Get paid well for an important job but get the book thrown at you if you do anything dodgy. I’d quite like to see professional ministers as well so MPs can concentrate on being MPs but I appreciate that would need some changes to the way parliament work.
We basically have professional ministers already - it’s the senior members of the civil service, they’re just less public facing as their job is to make things happen, not headlines.
I think there is certainly a case for baring MPs from consultancy gigs where they are effectively being paid for influence. It gets trickier with some professions needing a certain number of hours to “stay current”. Who’s going to take a worse paid job which guarantees they can’t return to their old career if they lose the next election?
I’d prefer paying MPs and ministers more but with the same sort of anti corruption approaches they have in Singapore. Get paid well for an important job but get the book thrown at you if you do anything dodgy. I’d quite like to see professional ministers as well so MPs can concentrate on being MPs but I appreciate that would need some changes to the way parliament work.
We basically have professional ministers already - it’s the senior members of the civil service, they’re just less public facing as their job is to make things happen, not headlines.