In his column in the local rags published on July 2 2009 Michael Howard tackled the issue of his outside appointments. Outside interests have always had to be registered (see ‘Howard in Hot Water’, below).Due to changes in legislation MPs will have to record how many hours are spent on outside interests and how much money is earned.
Mr. Howard writes; “In preparation for the day when I step down, I have accepted a number of outside appointments,” which appears to give the false impression that these are a recent development. Looking back through the Register of Members’ Interests (http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm/cmregmem.htm) Mr. Howard has held remunerated positions for years.
“..It is in the national interest for MPs not to be drawn exclusively from the class of professional politicians.” However, the idea that outside interests paying large amounts of money to elected representatives could present a conflict of interests is not covered as he prepares us that “The amounts I earn are significant – I hope you will agree that it is to your advantage to have someone who can command such significant sums from the private sector.”
Mr Howard ends with the news that not only did he refuse to accept pay and pension increases, he is “now … undertaking to make no claim on my Second Homes Allowance for this year,” which looks like an ‘apology-lite’ version of other MPs paying back wrongly claimed expenses while insisting they did nothing wrong. It’s refreshing to know he is earning enough money from outside appointments to not need to claim expenses. Sadly an explanation as to why he claimed these last year is not given.
If anyone is wondering why there are no links to the article, in what must be an unfortunate oversight Mr. Howard’s website has republished the previous week’s column. I have written an email to the site admin so hopefully will add the link soon.
