Westminster Accounts: MPs earn £17.1m on top of their salaries since the last election – with Tories taking £15.4m
MPs have earned £17.1m on top of their salaries in this parliament, with around two-thirds of the money going to just 20 MPs.
As part of Westminster Accounts, a joint project between Sky News and Tortoise Media to shine a light on how money works in politics, we found the majority of the extra earnings went to Tory politicians – a total of £15.2m – while Labour MPs earned an additional £1.2m.
All MPs are paid a base salary of £84,144.
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Former prime minister Theresa May received the most on the list, earning £2,550,876 since the session began in December 2019.
Meanwhile, Labour’s shadow foreign secretary David Lammy topped his party’s list with additional earnings of £202,599.
The debate over second jobs dominated 2021 after former Tory MP Owen Paterson became embroiled in a lobbying scandal that eventually led to his resignation.
Other high-profile cases of MPs staying within the rules but earning thousands for outside work emerged, and demands for reform began to ring from all corners of the Commons.
Some changes are due to come into effect later this year, with MPs to be banned from taking on work as political or parliamentary consultants from March.
One source involved in drafting the new rules suggested this could impact the second jobs of around 30 MPs.
But they will not prevent others from earning significant amounts for speeches, TV appearances and legal work.
As mentioned, Mrs May has accrued the most in the past three years with a lengthy list of speaking engagements.
Her single biggest pay cheque came from Cambridge Speaker Series, who gave her £408,200 for six talks in California, as well as flights and accommodation for her and a member of staff.
Mrs May was able to earn £38,000 from MPSF for a talk she gave virtually.
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How you can explore the Westminster Accounts
Perhaps most notable, however, is the money she received from the World Travel and Tourism Council for a speech she gave in November.
Her entry in the register of members’ interests makes no mention of the fact this £107,600 speech was delivered in Saudi Arabia – a country she blocked ministers and officials from visiting for a period while she was prime minister following the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
Mrs May has said the money she earns goes into a company called the Office of Theresa May Limited, from which she pays herself a salary of £85,000 a year. The rest of the cash, she says, goes to support her charitable work, though it is not known how much, and to pay for other activities as a former prime minister.
MPs are not required to make public their charitable donations, but Mrs May does carry out extensive charitable work – including for diabetes groups.
Despite repeated requests for comment about her earnings, no response has been received from Mrs May.
The next highest paid MP for work outside of parliament was Sir Geoffrey Cox, who totted up £2,191,387 from nine different law firms and a local Conservative association.
Sir Geoffrey Cox pictured when he was attorney general. Pic: UK Parliament
There was controversy last year when the former attorney general was found to have earned over £800,000 from the law firm Withers for his work on an inquiry into corruption in the British Virgin Islands.
His earnings from Withers have now risen to over £1.8m in the past three years.
In a statement, Sir Geoffrey said: “A barrister retained to advise in a case is no more to be personally identified with the purposes and views of his client than a plumber with the views of his customer or a doctor with those of his patient.
“Therefore, there is no conflict of interest between my work as a barrister and my role as a member of parliament. On the other hand, I frequently put my experience and understanding of the law at the service of my constituents in helping them to resolve their individual problems in my regular advice surgeries.”
The former attorney general added: “Private practice as a barrister is certainly no more time consuming and demanding than the role of attorney general. If it is possible to carry out the role of an MP while also the senior law officer, it is certainly possible to do so while continuing selective practice at the Bar.”
The third spot in the list of parliament’s biggest earners is taken by another former prime minister, Boris Johnson.
The Uxbridge MP has rocketed up the earnings rankings, declaring more than a million pounds in earnings since he stepped down from office last September.
Almost all of his declared earnings since the last election came from just four speeches in October and November last, one of which in New York was paid at a rate of around £32,500 per hour.
The fourth spot went to another Tory MP, Fiona Bruce, who earned £711,749 from her own law firm on top of her salary.
Tory MP Fiona Bruce. Pic: UK Parliament
In a statement to Sky News, Ms Bruce said: “Much of the sum declared is in fact tax paid directly to HMRC on my behalf which, to be scrupulously correct, I have declared though not personally received.”
She added: “Examination of my entries shows the limited hours I spend in the law firm; this limited time does not detract from my commitment to my constituents.”
Fellow Conservative Sir John Redwood came in fifth, earning £692,438 with the majority coming from his “global strategist” role at investment firm Charles Stanley.
And sixth place is Foreign Office minister Andrew Mitchell with £464,232 – over £100,000 of which was paid from advising investment bank SouthBridge on “African matters”. Mr Mitchell’s earnings were accrued while he was on the backbenches. He resigned from all his outside interests when he returned to government in October.
Other notable names in the list include former chancellor Sajid Javid, who has earned £361,566 from advising banks on the global economy and giving speeches.
Conservative MP Sir Bill Wiggin has made over £250,000 as an asset manager – running four funds, all based in the tax havens of the Caymans and the island of Bermuda, while ex-transport secretary Chris Grayling, known for granting a £14m ferry contract to a company with no ships, is now making £100,000 a year advising a ports and shipping business.
Only two Labour MPs made it into the top 20 earners, one of which is David Lammy, who has declared income from more than 40 different sources – the most of any MP on our list.
Shadow foreign secretary David Lammy
The shadow foreign secretary has listed at least 30 speaking and training engagements since December 2019, worth around £100,000, as well as more than £87,000 for a radio programme on LBC.
Sky News approached both Mr Lammy and the Labour Party to ask whether his work would qualify as an “exemption” from Sir Keir Starmer’s planned ban on second jobs, but no response was received.
However, Mr Lammy has in the past made an impassioned defence of his work on his radio show, saying: “Why am I here? Why am I pleased to be here? One because I am the only black presenter on LBC. It’s important for my constituents – I love the fact they approach me and can hear me putting views that they agree with out there into the public.”
Jess Phillips is the only other Labour MP in the top 20, ranking at number 19 with £162,838 of external earnings that come from a range of places – including almost £65,000 for an advance on a book, £25,000 for appearing on Have I Got News For You, and just shy of £30,000 for columns in the Independent.
Outside earnings for the Liberal Democrats totalled £171,000 – but £159,758 of that has been earned by party leader, Sir Ed Davey, who is the 21st highest earning MP.
He earns £5,000 a month as a political consultant for Herbert Smith Freehills and £37,984 as an asset manager for solar projects.
Commenting on the Westminster Accounts findings on MPs’ earnings, Hannah White, director of the Institute for Government, said the party affiliation of those receiving the most outside income showed why reform has been slow.
She told Sky News: “When you look at the data, it is very clear that there is a party pattern to which MPs are getting outside earnings.”
“I think that points to one reason why there hasn’t been a big incentive to sort this out in this parliament.
“[It explains] why it has been the case that although parliament decided that it wanted to put some restrictions on outside earnings, really the changes that have been made are pretty minimal, and there’s no real incentive on the ruling Conservative Party to push their MPs to change something like that”.
Many leading politicians are fond of talking about having been on a journey. But Kemi Badenoch’s journey has been longer and more eventful than most.
From the leafy London suburb of Wimbledon to Nigeria in West Africa and back to south London, and from the socialist hotbed of Sussex University to the rural idyll of Saffron Walden in Essex, she will hope her journey will ultimately take her to 10 Downing Street.
Along the way, this battling Boudica of the Conservative Party has earned a reputation for a combative and at times abrasive style of politics, aggressive even: someone who’d cross the road to have a fight.
Politics live: Reaction after new leader of opposition elected
“I am somebody who is very blunt,” she admitted when challenged about this reputation by Sophy Ridge on Sky News this week.
“I’m very forthright and I’m very confident as well. I’m not a wallflower.”
Now the Conservative Party members have voted to elect her as leader after strong performances in hustings and a TV debate which saw her recover from a gaffe-prone party conference.
In the three stages of the leadership contest, she gained momentum at the right time. Robert Jenrick was the candidate with momentum in the early rounds of voting by MPs in September.
James Cleverly then had it after he stole the show at the conference “beauty contest”. But as party members cast their votes, the momentum appeared to be with Ms Badenoch.
It did not look that way at the conference in Birmingham, when she clumsily declared maternity pay was “excessive” and said some civil servants were so bad 10% of them should be in prison.
Ironically, given her maternity pay gaffe, the mother-of-three has benefited from a row over veteran Tory MP Sir Christopher Chope, a Jenrick backer, declaring: “You can’t spend all your time with your family at the same time being leader of the opposition.”
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Badenoch elected Conservative leader
Wimbledon to Nigeria – and back again
Ms Badenoch’s background, however, is literally miles away – more than 3,000, in fact – from those of typical Conservative politicians. Her early years were spent in Nigeria, controversially described by David Cameron in 2016 as one of the most corrupt countries in the world.
Her Nigerian parents were comfortably middle class, “with a car and a driver”, she says. Father Femi was a GP with his own clinic, and her mother Feyi was an academic at the University of Lagos college of medicine.
But Ms Badenoch – full name Olukemi Olufunto Adegoke – was born in the private St Teresa’s Hospital in Wimbledon in January 1980 after her parents travelled to Britain and paid for private healthcare. It meant she had a British passport.
She then lived in Lagos until she was 16, when she returned to Wimbledon to take her A levels, in maths, biology and chemistry, living with her mother’s best friend “for a better future”, after arriving in the UK with just £100.
So she worked part-time in Wimbledon’s McDonald’s, cleaning toilets and “flipping burgers”, she says. Yet last month she was ridiculed by Labour MPs after saying: “I became working class when I was 16 working at McDonald’s.”
Next on her journey was Sussex University and a computer course. Here she had no time for the left-wing students she called “stupid lefty white kids” and later denounced Bob Geldof’s 2005 Live 8 charity concerts as patronising to Africans.
Working in banking, she joined the Conservative Party in that year, and though she was a massive Margaret Thatcher fan she became an early Cameroon.
She was on her way, becoming a member of the London Assembly and fighting Dulwich and West Norwood against Labour’s Tessa Jowell in the 2010 general election, coming third behind the Liberal Democrats.
Kemi Badenoch has spoken of her admiration for Mrs Thatcher. Pic: PA
Just like Mrs Thatcher nearly 60 years earlier, it was when she was a parliamentary candidate that Kemi met her husband, Cambridge-educated banker and party activist Hamish Badenoch.
He had been head boy at Ampleforth College, the catholic public school, a councillor in Merton, south London, and Conservative candidate in Foyle, in Northern Ireland, in the 2015 general election.
They were both born at the same hospital in Wimbledon, St Teresa’s, a year apart. After university Hamish worked in Malawi, Nigeria and Kenya before returning to London and Barclays, before his current job at Deutsche Bank.
Read more on Kemi Badenoch:
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Entry into politics
But the noughties saw two potentially embarrassing blemishes on Ms Badenoch’s upwardly mobile CV. One was her widely reported hacking of Harriet Harman’s website, revealed shortly after she became MP for Saffron Walden in 2017.
These days, she regards the incident as relatively trivial. “It was a summary offence at the time, the same as a speeding ticket,” she told Sophy Ridge this week. “It was actually something quite different from what the law is now.
“And this was something that happened ten years before I was a member of parliament. It was very amusing at the time. Now that I’m an MP, it’s a lot less amusing.”
The other, described in Lord Ashcroft’s biography, Blue Ambition, was a near-fight with a member of the public at Oxford Town Hall in 2006 during a Conservative party event.
After an argument between the pair, the woman slapped Ms Badenoch and then ran off. Ms Badenoch then chased her up some stairs and grabbed her by the hair and pulled her back, before letting go and the woman ran out of the town hall.
“I never saw her again, thank goodness,” she said, recalling the incident years later.
Once in parliament with a safe seat, now called North West Essex, Brexiteer Badenoch’s ascent up the ministerial ladder was swift: party vice-chair, children and families, international trade, Treasury, equalities and local government, before joining Liz Truss’s cabinet and continuing under Rishi Sunak.
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‘I will swing back’
In the 2019 Tory leadership contest, she backed Michael Gove, widely viewed by MPs as her long-term mentor. Then in 2022, after quitting along with umpteen other ministers triggering Boris Johnson’s downfall, she stood herself, coming fourth. But she had put down a marker.
As a cabinet minister, covering business and equalities at the same time, she has lived up to her reputation as a blunt-speaking – critics would say rude – political scrapper, with some fiery clashes with opponents, some Tories and even Dr Who.
Her handling of the Post Office Horizon scandal was fiercely criticised after she controversially sacked Post Office chairman Henry Staunton when he claimed he was told to “stall” compensation payments – and then had a public row with him.
Courting controversy
One of her most high-profile spats was with former Doctor Who star David Tennant, after he said at the British LGBT awards: “Until we wake up and Kemi Badenoch doesn’t exist any more – I don’t wish ill of her, I just wish her to shut up.”
She hit back on X: “I will not shut up. A rich, lefty, white male celebrity so blinded by ideology he can’t see the optics of attacking the only black woman in government by calling publicly for my existence to end.”
She has also been reprimanded by Caroline Nokes, then chair of the equalities committee and now – ominously for Ms Badenoch – a Commons deputy speaker.
Pic: Reuters
During a bad-tempered and shouty row at a hearing of Ms Nokes’ committee, Ms Badenoch accused the left-wing Labour MP Kate Osborne of lying in a row about trans issues.
Last year she infuriated Commons Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle by issuing a written statement on scrapping EU laws after Brexit rather than making a full Commons statement to MPs.
After she told the speaker she was sorry the timing of the announcement was “not to your satisfaction”, Sir Lindsay bellowed at her: “Who do you think you’re speaking to?”
It’s clashes like these on her long political journey that have led to claims that Ms Badenoch could start a fight in an empty room.
She is, after all, an aggressive, confrontational anti-woke crusader who takes no prisoners. And that’s just what her supporters say!
Sir Keir Starmer, beware.
UK
Four girls suffer ‘potentially life-changing injuries’ in bathroom of Brighton fast-food restaurant
Four girls have suffered serious burns in the bathroom of a Brighton fast-food restaurant.
Emergency services were called at 8.28pm on Thursday, which was also Halloween, to reports of a fire at a Wendy’s restaurant on Western Road, Brighton.
The four 12-year-old girls suffered “potentially life-changing” injuries, according to Sussex police, and were taken to hospital.
They remain in serious but stable conditions.
Sussex Police and the fire service are still looking into the cause of the incident, but said no fireworks were involved.
The incident was accidental, according to the fire and rescue service, and members of the public were not at risk.
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Three fire engines, an aerial appliance and specialist officers attended.
The police force said they would not release more information at this time as they are “being sensitive towards the injuries of the people involved”.
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“Our thoughts are with those recovering from this incident in our Brighton restaurant,” a spokesperson for Wendy’s said.
“The safety of our customers and employees is our highest priority. We are continuing to work with the local police authorities on their investigation.”
Kemi Badenoch has won the race to be the next leader of the Conservative Party.
The 44-year-old North West Essex MP has been declared the winner of the months-long contest, beating Robert Jenrick.
Ms Badenoch received 53,806 votes to Mr Jenrick’s 41,388.
Politics latest: Reaction after new leader of the opposition revealed
Ms Badenoch has served as shadow business and trade secretary since the Conservative Party lost the general election in July and Rishi Sunak said he would stand down as leader, triggering the campaign.
Her campaign was called Renewal 2030 and has targeted the next election for the Tories to return to power.
Ms Badenoch has been criticised at times for her outspoken approach, with opponents jumping on comments she has made about subjects such as maternity pay, gender equality and net zero.
But she has long been popular among the party membership, and previously ran to be leader in 2022.
It is not clear who her shadow cabinet will be made up of, but she has suggested that all those who ran to be leader against her should be involved.
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Badenoch crowned Tory leader
However, James Cleverly revealed the day before the results that he would be returning to the backbenches.
Speaking after her win, Ms Badenoch thanked the other candidates, saying the party had come through the campaign “more united”.
The new leader went on to say the party’s first duty as opposition was to hold Labour to account – and also to prepare for government by the time of the next election.
She then went on to criticise previous Conservative administrations.
Ms Badenoch said: “Our party is critical to the success of our country.
“But to be heard, we have to be honest, honest about the fact that we made mistakes, honest about the fact that we let standards slip.
“The time has come to tell the truth, to stand up for our principles, to plan for our future, to reset our politics and our thinking, and to give our party and our country the new start that they deserve.
“It is time to get down to business. It is time to renew.”
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Badenoch: ‘We let standards slip’
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In total, around 132,000 members of the Conservative Party were eligible to vote in the leadership election – a noticeable fall from the 172,000 in the contest in 2022 which Liz Truss won.
The turnout was also down – 72.8% in 2024 vs 82.2% in 2022 – with around 40,000 members not voting.
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said: “Congratulations, Kemi Badenoch, on becoming the Conservative Party’s new leader.
“The first black leader of a Westminster party is a proud moment for our country.
“I look forward to working with you and your party in the interests of the British people.”
Ellie Reeves, who is chair of the Labour Party, delivered a more political attack: “It’s been a summer of yet more Conservative chaos and division.
“They could have spent the past four months listening to the public, taking responsibility for the mess they made and changing their party.
“Instead, Kemi Badenoch’s election as leader shows they’re incapable of change.
“Meanwhile, the Labour Government is getting on with fixing the foundations of our economy and cleaning up the mess the Tories left behind.”
Mr Jenrick congratulate Ms Badenoch on her win. Pic: PA
Read more on UK politics:
The combative past of Kemi Badenoch
CPS passed case on suspended Labour MP
Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey congratulated Ms Badenoch as well for her election – before adding that the Tories are still “too divided, out-of-touch and unable to accept Conservative failures over the past years”.
Richard Tice, the leader of the Conservative Party, did not congratulate her and instead attacked Ms Badenoch for her record – saying “she has failed the British public before and she will fail them again as leader of the Conservative Party”.
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