Sir Keir Starmer has defended a key member of his top team, after Tortoise Media revealed the scale of the Labour MP’s outside earnings.
David Lammy, the shadow foreign secretary, has earned £200,000 from second jobs alongside both his front bench and constituency work. He is one of only two Labour MPs in the top 20 league table of parliament’s earners, as revealed for the first time in the Westminster Accounts database created jointly by Tortoise and Sky News.
Starmer positions himself as a man looking to usher in hope and change. The Labour leader has previously backed a ban on second jobs for MPs, although he stressed there should be some exceptions, for example where qualifications need to be maintained.
But he told Sky News that Lammy’s media work – such as his regular show on LBC, which has earned him £87,000 since the last election, slightly more than an MP’s base salary – should also be exempt.
“I think David does a lot of media work, and I think media work and writing books is all part of the political process,” he said. “But there’s a discussion to be had. I was urging the whole House of Commons to agree new rules because I do think we should get rid of second jobs with some exceptions.”
In the same interview Starmer said the UK’s transparency rules were already robust, and that MPs regularly declare their earnings.
But the Westminster Accounts, a project months in the making, shows just how challenging it is to join the dots.
As our data team note: “You shouldn’t need an engineering background and six months’ hard labour to uncover basic facts about who’s paying the people who make your laws.”
There is no suggestion of wrongdoing by Lammy or any other MP named in our work.
Lammy, who did not respond to requests for a comment, is 12th in the league table of highest-earning MPs, which is topped by Theresa May.
May, who also did not respond to requests for a comment, has earned more than £2.5 million, mainly from a series of speaking engagements to audiences around the world, including the US, Sweden and Saudi Arabia.
Starmer told Sky: “The more transparency, the better, so that everybody can see exactly what has been declared and ask whatever they want about it.”
