Tory MP Takes £46,000 a-Year Second Job With Energy Company

Tory MP Takes £46,000 a-Year Second Job With Energy Company

Amid a cost of living and climate crisis, one Conservative MP has accepted a £2,600 a-day role at an American energy firm, reveals Sam Bright

Mark Pritchard, Conservative MP for The Wrekin in Shropshire, has accepted a lucrative second job with an American energy firm during the cost of living crisis, new records reveal.

The latest register of MPs’ interests shows that Pritchard was appointed as a “strategic marketing communications” advisor to Linden Energy Holdings on 1 May this year, with an annual salary of £3,900 a-month, equivalent to £46,800 a-year. Pritchard is contracted to deliver 12 hours of work a month for Linden, meaning that his hourly rate is £325 (£2,600 a-day).

Pritchard is also paid £50,000 cumulatively for “strategic marketing counsel”, working for two other firms. He is expected to devote 25 hours a month to these two roles – 37 hours across all three roles – equivalent to approximately a whole working week every month.

The median average salary for full-time workers in the UK is £31,285. The basic annual salary for an MP is £84,144 – meaning that Pritchard earns £180,944 a-year from his four jobs, putting him in the top 1% of earners in the UK.

The country is currently suffering from a cost of living crisis spurred by rapidly rising energy bills – the poorest 20% of households expected to pay an additional £1,700-£1,800 to use as much energy in 2022-23 as they did in 2019-20.

It will therefore perturb voters that Pritchard is earning significant sums of money from a second job working for an energy firm, while most people are saddled with the spiralling cost of energy. Pritchard is supporting Liz Truss in the current Conservative leadership contest.

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Linden focuses on ‘energy development’, obtaining sources of energy from natural resources, including fossil fuels. Recently, the firm announced that it had signed an agreement to acquire 50% of Bulgaria’s largest privately owned gas company, Overgas. The shares were previously owned by Russia’s Gazprom and were repurchased by Overgas in December 2020.

Linden Energy President Steve Payne allegedly “has been active in the energy industry of the former Soviet Union for decades”.

Linden appears to acknowledge the realities of climate change and the environmental need to transition to renewable sources of energy. However, Payne, a former advisor to George W. Bush, was reportedly a “key player” in lobbying the US to lift its oil export ban in 2015. Greenpeace has found that reinstating the ban could lead to reductions in global greenhouse gas emissions of as much as 80 to 181 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent. By comparison, New York City annually accounts for 55 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent.

Pritchard’s new role also follows recent controversy about the second jobs of MPs. Late last year, the Government attempted to defend then-Conservative MP Owen Paterson, after he was found to have breached Parliament’s lobbying rules on behalf of two clients that collectively paid him £108,000 a-year. The ensuing political scandal forced Paterson to stand down from Parliament and prompted uproar over the lucrative employment opportunities quietly enjoyed by the nation’s representatives.

A recent analysis found that MPs had collectively earned £13 million from second jobs from 2019 to 2022.

However, even so, plans to cap the extracurricular earnings of MPs have been dropped by the Government, with ministers telling the House of Commons Standards Committee that such a reform would be “impractical”. Labour, meanwhile, has suggested that it would ban MPs from holding second jobs.

Mark Pritchard did not respond to our request for comment.