Money talks: Media companies pay British MPs nearly £1.5 million

Politics used to be called showbiz for ugly people. That’s old-fashioned: these days, parliamentarians are never off our screens – and increasingly they are cashing in on life in the limelight. Media companies have paid British MPs nearly £1.5 million since the last election, with Conservative MPs raking in the lion’s share of the total, a Tortoise analysis reveals. Most of the money has come from the upstart broadcaster GB News, which has handed more than £726,000 to politicians, including £324,000 to Jacob Rees-Mogg, a former cabinet minister, and nearly £100,000 to Lee Anderson, the former Conservative party deputy chairman. Just £1,100 of the total went to Labour MPs. Tortoise’s Westminster Accounts tool shows that MPs have also pocketed more than £335,000 from ITV, largely thanks to Matt Hancock’s 2022 appearance in I’m A Celebrity, for which he lost the Tory whip. News UK, which owns The Times, The Sun, Times Radio and TalkTV, paid just shy of £200,000. Over the same period LBC’s parent company paid £166,300 to MPs, principally Labour’s shadow foreign secretary David Lammy, who received £154,000 for a regular presenting slot. But Lammy is an exception, proving the rule that Tory earnings dwarf Labour MPs’ at £820,000, excluding £446,000 going to those who currently sit as independents, including Hancock and Anderson.