Honestly, if we’re going to insist on this representative stuff that maintains a persistent hierarchy of power, it needs to be divorced from these kinds of influence channels. Becoming an MP should be an exclusive commitment. Once an MO, you should be barred from all other employment for a long time after leaving office.

We should all be more than happy to guarantee former MPs wages for that entire period, it would be a drop in the bucket of any national budget and would be a significant filter both to becoming an MP in the first place and to engaging in this kind of influence peddling as well.

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.