MPs with second jobs have an average wage of £233 per hour, Sky News can reveal.
The typical rate for MPs is 17 times the national average – and over 22 higher than the minimum hourly wage.
The highest hourly rate for a current MP goes to Liz Truss, who got £15,770 per hour.
Ms Truss’s most lucrative work since leaving Number 10 has been a speech in Taiwan. She was paid at a rate of £20,000 per hour – nearly 1,500 times the UK average hourly wage – for her insights into global diplomacy.
Even higher than Ms Truss is Boris Johnson, who resigned as an MP last month. His hourly rate comes in at £21,822, but having left parliament, he is free to work without having to publicly record his earnings.
The leaderboard of the MPs with the 20 highest hourly rates in this parliament reveals a clear pattern: 18 have government experience, suggesting a ministerial background is valued by some employers.
Use this interactive Westminster Accounts table to see how many hours each MP has worked in second jobs, and the equivalent hourly rate they have received:
The Westminster Accounts project – produced in association with media company Tortoise – has analysed the data MPs provide about how much time they have worked on second jobs in this parliament.
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The MP who records the highest hours outside their work as a backbench MP is Douglas Ross, the leader of the Conservatives in the Scottish Parliament.
He recorded working 3,869 hours on top of his role as an MP: 3,739 hours as an MSP, 89 hours for the Scottish Football Association as a referee, and the rest refereeing in other roles.
Mr Ross is standing down as an MP at the next election to concentrate on his work in Scotland, but political double-jobbing of this nature is not routinely considered controversial in Westminster.
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Tory MPs probed by expenses watchdog
Dr Dan Poulter is the MP who spends the most amount of time in a non-political job. The Conservative and NHS hospital doctor works in mental health services. He has registered 3,508 hours since the 2019 election.
The MP registering the most hours in the private sector is barrister Sir Geoffrey Cox, who put the tally at 2,565.
The highest Labour name in this list is the shadow foreign secretary David Lammy, who has worked nearly 1,000 hours for 45 different organisations. He has worked almost 700 hours in second jobs since the Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer announced a policy to ban them in the aftermath of the Owen Paterson scandal.
Westminster Accounts at a glance: use the table below to see how much money has gone to parties, MPs and APPGs in the form of donations and earnings since the 2019 election – and the individuals or organisations behind the funding.
Jill Rutter, the former top official now with the Institute for Government, questioned whether MPs were required to record their outside hours in the correct way, given that MPs often register four or five hours when giving an overseas speech would take them out of the country for several days.
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She said: “I think we can probably rely on [this system] to answer the question ‘How long does a particular task take?’ – I don’t think we can rely on it to answer the question about ‘How unavailable does that make you?’
“If you give a speech in London, you put down an hour-and-a-half. That’s probably pretty fair.
“But the same speech given in Chicago or Calcutta, it’s an hour-and-a-half of the speech, but actually you were away from the country quite a long time. So if we want to say how available are you as an MP, the system is really not very good for that.”
The man who served 14 years in jail for the murder of schoolboy Jimmy Mizen has been recalled to prison for breaching his licence conditions.
It follows reporting in The Sun newspaper that Jake Fahri, 35, was a drill rapper releasing music under the name TEN, who conceals his identity with a balaclava, and was played on BBC 1Xtra.
A Probation Service spokesperson said: “Our thoughts are with Jimmy Mizen’s family who deserve better than to see their son’s murderer shamelessly boasting about his violent crime.”
Jimmy’s father Barry told Sky News: “We’re not gloating or anything, in a way it’s quite sad.”
His son bled to death after Fahri threw an oven dish at him in a south London bakery on 10 May 2008.
The dish shattered on his chin and severed an artery in the schoolboy’s neck.
Fahri was 19 when he was given a life sentence in 2009 with a minimum term of 14 years and was released on licence in June 2023.
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His music was played on BBC 1Xtra less than 18 months later, the Sun reported, adding that DJ Theo Johnson named him an “up-and-coming star”.
Jimmy’s father earlier said he and his wife Margaret were “stunned into silence” when they were told about Fahri’s music, which often features violent themes.
In one song, which appears to reference Jimmy’s death, he raps about “sharpening” a blade.
“Judge took a look at me, before the trial even started he already knows he’s gonna throw the book at me,” the lyrics say.
Another track includes the lines: “See a man’s soul fly from his eyes and his breath gone… I wanted more, it made it less wrong. Seeing blood spilled same floor he was left on.”
The BBC has said the artist’s tracks do not feature on any BBC playlists, and that a track which appeared to reference Jimmy’s death had never been played on its channels.
A spokesman for the broadcaster added there were “no further plans to play his music”, adding: “We were not aware of his background and we in no way condone his actions.”
A Probation Service spokesperson said: “All offenders released on licence are subject to strict conditions. As this case shows, we will recall them to prison if they break the rules.”
Jimmy’s parents founded the Mizen Foundation after their son’s death. The charity helps young people in London who are escaping violence.
Mr Mizen said: “It appears that if he’s been recalled to prison, he must’ve breached his licence conditions
The man suspected of abducting Madeleine McCann won’t face any charges in the foreseeable future, a prosecutor has told Sky News.
German drifter Christian B, who cannot be fully identified under his country’s privacy law, is expected to be freed from an unrelated jail sentence this year while police in three countries continue to search for evidence against him.
Prosecutor Hans Christian Wolters said: “There is currently no prospect of an indictment in the Maddie case.
“As things stand, the accused Christian B’s imprisonment will end in early September.”
Madeleine, aged three, was asleep with her younger twin siblings in the family’s Portuguese rented holiday apartment before mother Kate discovered her missing at around 10pm on 3 May, 2007.
Her parents were dining nearby on the complex with friends and taking turns to check on all their sleeping children every half an hour.
Madeleine’s disappearance has become the world’s most mysterious missing child case.
Philipp Marquort, one of Christian B’s defence lawyers, welcomed the prosecutor’s pessimism about bringing charges.
He said: “This confirms the suspicions that we have repeatedly expressed, namely that there is no reliable evidence against our client.
“We regret that we have not yet been granted access to the investigation files. We have not yet been able to effectively counter the public prejudice arising from statements made by the prosecutor’s office.”
Christian B, 47, is in jail and coming to the end of his sentence for the rape of an elderly American woman in Praia da Luz, the Portuguese resort where Madeleine disappeared.
In October, he was acquitted on a series of rape and indecent assault charges after a non-jury trial in Germany, in which several references were made to his status as the main suspect in the Madeleine case.
The prosecutor said he was awaiting the court’s written judgment before launching an appeal against the acquittal. He believes the trial judges were biased against the prosecution.
If successful, he could apply for a new arrest warrant for Christian B to keep him in custody until a retrial with new judges.
He said: “We hope that the Federal Court of Justice will decide before the end of the accused’s imprisonment. If the Federal Court follows our legal opinion, we could apply for a new arrest warrant for the accused’s offences, so that the accused would then remain in custody beyond September 2025.
Mr Marquort said the defence team would oppose the prosecution’s appeal against the acquittal.
Prosecutor Mr Wolters has said in the past that he believes Madeleine is dead and that Christian B was responsible for her death. The suspect denies any involvement.
The case against Christian B is purely circumstantial; he’s alleged to have confessed to a friend that he abducted Madeleine, he has convictions for sex crimes against children, he was living in the area at the time, his mobile phone was close by when the young girl vanished and he re-registered one of his vehicles the next day.
The prosecutor won’t say what evidence he has to convince him Madeleine is dead, but he admitted he is still trying to find forensic evidence to link Christian B to the girl.
Jim Gamble, former head of the UK Child Exploitation and Online Protection centre, said he had expected the prosecutor to charge Christian B soon.
“He’s implied the whole way through that he has something more than the public are aware of,” he said.
“He’s made fairly definitive statements about whether Madeleine is alive or dead so you would expect their strategy to have been to charge him sooner rather than later.
“From what he’s said today I wonder if we’re witnessing the re-positioning of something to manage the disappointment that’ll come.”
Mr Wolters, who is based in Braunschweig, Lower Saxony, is investigating the case with the help of Portuguese police and detectives from Scotland Yard.
An investigation, led by the Surrey and Sussex Police Major Crime Team, is under way and inquiries remain ongoing, police said.
Senior Investigating Officer DCI Kimball Edey said specialist officers “are working around the clock to gather as much information as possible,” and that the force’s “thoughts are with the family and friends of the victims at this unbelievably difficult time”.