In brief:
- Between June 2017 and October 2019, MPs earned £8.4 million in addition to their parliamentary salary (an average of £12,900 per MP).
- Over half of this amount was earned by just 15 MPs.
- Boris Johnson earned the most, nearly £800,000. That’s equivalent to an additional £27,440 a month.
- Men earned more than women, both in nominal terms and per hour. The average male MP earned £159 per hour. The average female MP earned £116.
- Conservatives earned an average £24,000, more than MPs from any other party. Labour MPs earned an average £1,890.
The annual salary for an MP in the United Kingdom is £79,468. But MPs can earn additional income by, for example, giving speeches, writing articles and advising companies. They must declare these earnings, but not in a format that enables easy comparison across MPs. So, we’ve written some code which converts all their payment declarations into a common format. All £8.4 million of them. Here’s what we found.
Between 8th June 2017 and 31st October 2019 (the most recent Parliament), the average MP earned £12,879. That’s roughly £5,330 every 12 months, earned mostly through second jobs (with a fixed, regular salary). But also through other ad-hoc tasks like giving speeches – Figure 1. We can’t see income from rental properties or financial assets.
Most MPs have not declared any additional earnings. This means that earnings are concentrated: 15 MPs account for over 50% of total earnings. Boris Johnson alone earned almost 10% of the total: nearly £800,000 or £27,440 a month. That was mostly earned through giving speeches. All 15 top-earners are men (Figure 2).
This reflects a broader gender pay-gap. The average female MP earned £3,350 in addition to their salary. The average male MP earned £17,360 – over 5 times as much (Figure 3). That pay gap exists in large part because women spend much less time earning additional income (Figure 4). The average female MP spent 25 hours earning additional cash in the last Parliament. The average male MP spent 89 hours.
But women also often earn less for performing the same type of activity. For all but TV/Radio, they earn less per hour (Figure 5). We need to do more analysis to explore the drivers of this pay gap. Female MPs receive a lower hourly rate for completing surveys – which may suggest they on average spend more time doing similar tasks. Or perhaps they have less relevant experience (e.g. in cabinet posts), explaining the lower rate they receive for speeches.
There are also notable pay differences when you look across parties. Conservatives tend to earn the most, followed by Lib Dems (Figure 6). Combined, this means different types of MP tend to make very different amounts in additional income. Male Conservative MPs earned an average of £27,895. Whilst Female Labour MPs earned an average of £1,563 (Figure 7).
We have further MP analysis in the pipeline. For example, on which corporates make the most payments to MPs. We also have clean data on the donations they receive (from cash to football tickets) and international trips. So, if you’ve enjoyed this piece – sign-up below for email updates. Or, you can follow us on twitter at LoboData.
Notes on data:
All the data used to calculate the numbers and charts cited in this article is available in spreadsheets below. The first spreadsheet includes all payments. The second includes payments where we also know how many hours each MP spent on the associated task (so we can calculate average hourly rates).
For second jobs, data cover 8th June 2017 to 31st October 2019. For all other (ad-hoc) tasks, data cover 8th June 2017 to 30th September 2019.
These data have been prepared on a best-endeavours basis. As the original dataset is highly unstructured it is possible that, in places, our code has incorrectly identified payment values and/or time commitments. We have also made some assumptions common to all MPs. For example, we assume a working day equals 7.5 hours, and payments from second jobs are received on a monthly basis (thus MPs will have received payments due for work until end October 2019). Where an MP provides a range for the amount of time spent on a task (e.g. 25 – 40 hours), we use the upper-end of the range.
Some of these additional earnings are donated to charity or an MP’s local party organisation. These amounts are still included in the statistics cited above. The value of donations is a very small percentage of total earnings.
When using these data or the charts above, cite www.datalobo.com
The raw, unstructured data can be downloaded from www.membersinterests.org.uk