Boris Johnson earned 85% of all the outside pay generated by MPs this year, Sky News can reveal.
The former prime minister has declared earnings of £4.8m, mostly since stepping down from Downing Street in speeches and book deals, the latest update to the Westminster Accounts by Sky News can reveal.
Some £3.7m of this was earned in just the first six weeks of this year, on top of the basic MP salary of £84,144.
Adding up the outside earnings of every MP in almost two months in 2023 comes to £4.4m, meaning that Mr Johnson received just under 85% of all second job cash. This includes all earnings released up to 20 February.
In January, Sky News launched the Westminster Accounts, a major ongoing investigation into how money works in politics.
We commissioned Tortoise Media to bring together information about MPs’ earnings and donations, as well as money flowing directly to political parties, in one searchable database updated whenever official bodies release more information.
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When the project launched, Theresa May was the MP with the highest declared earnings, with Mr Johnson in third place.
Mr Johnson’s extra-parliamentary work in the first two months of this year now pushes him to the top of the league table of outside earnings, with Mrs May moved into second place.
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Mrs May’s declared earnings of £2.55m are barely more than half that of Mr Johnson’s.
A spokesman for Mr Johnson said all his interests are properly registered and declared.
The bulk of Mr Johnson’s earnings comes from a high end speaking firm, the Harry Walker Agency, followed by a publishing contract with Harper Collins.
Image: Boris Johnson speaks during the Global Soft Power Summit, at the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre earlier this month
Nearly £2.5m from the speaking agency is “an advance for speaking engagements”, according to the register.
The speech at the International Symposium on Blockchain Advancements in Singapore earned Mr Johnson over a quarter of a million pounds. The highly paid speaking gigs have spanned Singapore, New York, Mumbai and, last week, Westminster.
The second-highest earner in the first two months of this year was the former Tory health secretary Matt Hancock, now an independent MP, earning £378,000.
Most of that has come from ITV for his appearance on I’m A Celebrity which saw him get the nation talking, lose the Conservative Party whip, eat a camel’s private parts and earn £320,000.
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His spokesman told Sky News he had donated £10,000 of that to charities – 3% of the total.
Mr Hancock has declared a further £48,000 from the serialisation of his book, which reportedly sold 3,000 copies in its first week.
The book’s ghostwriter Isabel Oakeshott has since forwarded 100,000 of Mr Hancock’s WhatsApp messages, shared with her as part of the book writing process, to a national newspaper.
MPs have declared a total of £22m on top of their annual salaries from outside earnings since the last general election.
Some 17 of the top 20 MPs with the highest declared outside earnings are Conservatives.
Donald Trump has described crucial trade talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping as “amazing” – and says he will visit Beijing in April.
The leaders of the world’s two biggest economies met in South Korea as they tried to defuse growing tensions – with both countries imposing aggressive tariffs on exports since the president’s second term began.
Aboard Air Force One, Mr Trump confirmed tariffs on Chinese goods exported to the US will be reduced, which could prove much-needed relief to consumers.
It was also agreed that Beijing will work “hard” to stop fentanyl flowing into the US.
Semiconductor chips were another issue raised during their 100-minute meeting, but the president admitted certain issues weren’t discussed.
“On a scale of one to 10, the meeting with Xi was 12,” he told reporters en route back to the US.
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‘Their handshake was almost a bit awkward’
Xi a ‘tough negotiator’, says Trump
The talks conclude a whirlwind visit across Asia – with Mr Trump saying he was “too busy” to see Kim Jong Un.
However, the president said he would be willing to fly back to see the North Korean leader, with a view to discussing denuclearisation.
Mr Trump had predicted negotiations with his Chinese counterpart would last for three or four hours – but their meeting ended in less than two.
The pair shook hands before the summit, with the US president quipping: “He’s a tough negotiator – and that’s not good!”
It marks the first face-to-face meeting between both men since 2019 – back in Mr Trump’s first term.
Image: Donald Trump and Xi Jinping. Pic: AP
There were signs that Beijing had extended an olive branch to Washington ahead of the talks, with confirmation China will start buying US soybeans again.
American farmers have been feeling the pinch since China stopped making purchases earlier this year – not least because the country was their biggest overseas market.
Chinese stocks reached a 10-year high early on Thursday as investors digested their meeting, with the yuan rallying to a one-year high against the US dollar.
Analysis: A fascinating power play
Sky News Asia correspondent Helen-Ann Smith – who is in Busan where the talks took place – said it was fascinating to see the power play between both world leaders.
She said: “Trump moved quickly to dominate the space – leaning in, doing all the talking, even responding very briefly to a few thrown questions.
“That didn’t draw so much as an eyebrow raise from his counterpart, who was totally inscrutable. Xi does not like or respond well to unscripted moments, Trump lives for them.”
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Will Trump really run for a third term?
On Truth Social, Mr Trump had described the summit as a gathering of the “G2” – a nod to America and China’s status as the world’s two biggest economies.
While en route to see President Xi, he also revealed that the US “Department of War” has now been ordered to start testing nuclear weapons for the first time since 1992.
Tens of thousands of people have been killed in the Sudanese city of Al Fashir by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in a two-day window after the paramilitary group captured the regional capital, analysts believe.
Sky News is not able to independently verify the claim by Yale Humanitarian Labs, as the city remains under a telecommunications blackout.
Stains and shapes resembling blood and corpses can be seen from space in satellite images analysed by the research lab.
Image: Al Fashir University. Pic: Airbus DS/2025
Image: Al Fashir University. Pic: Airbus DS/2025
Nathaniel Raymond, executive director of Yale Humanitarian Labs, said: “In the past 48 hours since we’ve had [satellite] imagery over Al Fashir, we see a proliferation of objects that weren’t there before RSF took control of Al Fashir – they are approximately 1.3m to 2m long which is critical because in satellite imagery at very high resolution, that’s the average length of a human body lying vertical.”
Mini Minawi, the governor of North Darfur, said on X that 460 civilians have been killed in the last functioning hospital in the city.
The Sudan Doctors Network has also shared that the RSF “cold-bloodedly killed everyone they found inside Al Saudi Hospital, including patients, their companions, and anyone else present in the wards”.
World Health Organisation (WHO) chief Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said it was “appalled and deeply shocked” by the reports.
Satellite images support the claims of a massacre at Al Saudi Hospital, according to Mr Raymond, who said YHL’s report detailed “a large pile of them [objects believed to be bodies] against a wall at one building at Saudi hospital. And we believe that’s consistent with reports that patients and staff were executed en masse”.
In a video message released on Wednesday, RSF commander Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo acknowledged “violations in Al Fashir” and claimed “an investigation committee should start to hold any soldier or officer accountable”.
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Army soldiers ‘fled key Sudan city’ before capture
Image: The Saudi Maternity Hospital in Al Fashir. Pic: Airbus DS /2025 via AP
The commander is known for committing atrocities in Darfur in the early 2000s as a Janjaweed militia leader, and the RSF has been accused of carrying out genocide in Darfur 20 years on.
Sources have told Sky News the RSF is holding doctors, journalists and politicians captive, demanding ransoms from some families to release their loved ones.
One video shows a man from Al Fashir with an armed man kneeling on the ground, telling his family to pay 15,000. The currency was not made clear.
In some cases, ransoms have been paid, but then more messages come demanding that more money be transferred to secure release.
Muammer Ibrahim, a journalist based in the city, is currently being held by the RSF, who initially shared videos of him crouched on the ground, surrounded by fighters, announcing his hometown had been captured under duress.
He is being held incommunicado as his family scrambles to negotiate his release. Muammer courageously covered the siege of Al Fashir for months, enduring starvation and shelling.
The Committee to Protect Journalists regional director Sara Qudah said the abduction of Muammar Ibrahim “is a grave and alarming reminder that journalists in Al Fashir are being targeted simply for telling the truth”.