“If someone is standing again for election, but they are also proactively looking at job opportunities in the eventuality that they might lose, there’s always the risk … that that information gets out and is politically damaging,” said former Liberal Democrat MP Tom Brake, who lost his seat in 2019 and now runs the Unlock Democracy pressure group.
Atherton said if MPs maintained a second profession, it could make losing easier. “If you’ve managed to hold on to your second job, whether you’re a doctor, whether you’re a teacher, whether you’re a nurse, that is worth its weight in gold,” she said.
British MPs are currently allowed to take on second jobs but are banned from providing paid parliamentary advice to outside organizations. Yet controversy over second jobs is never far from the headlines, and debate rages over where to draw the line.
Brake’s Unlock Democracy campaigns against MPs having second jobs involving large directorships or consultancies with outside firms.
But even he backs MPs earning “about half as much” as their political salary while in parliament, if limited to professions that require work to maintain an accreditation. Brake said this would mean MPs could more easily return to that role full-time “either because they choose to or because their electorate forces them to.”
Brake sees upsides to the churn, however. He suggests a higher turnover of MPs could mean a “more diverse range of people” in the Commons who want to serve for a single term rather than for their whole lives.