Lee Anderson said not so long ago that MPs looking for an extra £100,000 alongside their parliamentary salary should "really be looking for another job." That very same man has now officially started hosting his very own show on GB News, a job which he will be carrying out alongside his role as Ashfield's MP and for which he will be paid £100,000 a year.
More unusually, former Broxtowe MP Nick Palmer continued to work on the gaming magazine he founded whilst serving in Parliament in the late 90s and 2000s. Such roles seem to have generated far less heat than some of the second jobs held by MPs in the present day. It seems the key factor when it comes to MPs' second jobs is not time, but money. Arguments are understandably made that when elected to the House of Commons, an MP should spend all of their time either in the chamber or in their constituency.
The argument that time is the issue in these second jobs is therefore unconvincing, and so Labour's pledge to ban them seems to be going too far. Indeed, some roles carried out by MPs have included nursing and care worker shifts, the latter having been carried out by Nottingham East's Nadia Whittome for a fee donated to charity. In light of that, Keir Starmer has already begun to unravel the ban, saying there would of course be exceptions.
In the end though, the Government decided not to proceed with the idea. Steve Barclay and Sherwood MP Mark Spencer, then chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster and leader of the House of Commons respectively, said a cap on earnings could "prohibit activities" which do not bring "undue influence" on the political system.