Boris Johnson tops list of highest earners on top of his MP salary

Boris Johnson is said to be the highest earner outside his MP salary. Photograph: Stefan Rousseau/PA. - Credit: PA Wire/PA Images

Boris Johnson was the highest earning MP in the last parliament, trousering £800,000 on top of his MP’s salary, according to new calculations.

In the last parliament British MPs earned £8.4 million on top of their salaries, according to data website Data Lobo, with 15 MPs earning more than half of that.

Lobo has released calculations based on figures dating between June 2017 and October 2019, in efforts to make MPs’ outside earnings more transparent.

The site said in a tweet that they had made the calculations because “MPs declare such earnings, but in a super unstructured way”.

An MP’s salary is set at £79,468, but can be supplemented with second jobs, speaking fees, earnings from books and articles, completing surveys and advisory work.

Over half of this £8.4million was earned by just 15 MPs.#BorisJohnson earned the most, nearly £800,000. That's equivalent to an additional £27,440 a month. The other 14 top-earners were all men too… pic.twitter.com/6tyQyt8Hm1
— Lobo (@DataLobo) December 1, 2019

Boris Johnson’s lucrative now-defunct Telegraph column, reported as paying £275,000 a year, will be just one of the ways the prime minister has added to his income in the last parliament.

The 15 top outside earners on Data Lobo’s list top 15 MPs on the list, who included Sir Nicholas Soames, John Redwood, Owen Paterson and Jacob Rees-Mogg.

The Tories were listed as the highest earners outside their MP roles, followed by the Liberal Democrats.

Labour and independents were listed as earning far less outside their jobs.

“Since the last general election, the average MP has earned £12,900 in addition to their parliamentary salary,” wrote Data Lobo.

The data also suggested a significant gender gap in MPs’ outside earnings, with the top 12 on the list all being men.

While the average male MP earns £12,604 in a second job, female MPs earn just £1,590. Female MPs were found to be putting in, on average, 64 less hours on work for extra earnings than men.

Data Lobo is a new website that announced itself on Twitter in December with the bio: “At Lobo, we uncover the stories and facts buried in complex data.”