You’re sitting in the office minding your own business when an email comes through. You are about to hit the delete button when you notice that it’s a company looking for your advice.
You look at the website – they’re from the Far East but they seem professional. There’s no harm in talking to them.
Oh yes there is.
‘Hello’, says a voice you don’t recognise. ‘I’m calling from Fly-by-Night Public Affairs and I’d like to get your help to promote responsibility in the gambling/tobacco/alcohol/pornography (delete as appropriate) industry.’
You check. No it’s not Neil Parish who has been kicked out of Parliament just because he was harmlessly searching for a new Dominator tractor for his farm.
Scott Benton, the MP for Blackpool South, spent more than an hour with journalists from The Times pretending to be acting on behalf of the gambling industry. In secret filming he is alleged to have offered to table questions in Parliament and to leak a White Paper. A fee of £2,000 to £4,000 a day was mentioned.
A paltry MP’s salary of £86,584 plus expenses a year is only £200 per working day or £25 an hour. You’d be almost as well working in an Amazon warehouse or flipping hamburgers in McDonalds.
Mr Benton is not alone is being trapped in this sort of sting. So far, the former Chancellor of the Exchequer, Kwasi Kwarteng and the former Secretary of State of Health, Matt Hancock were trapped into revealing that they would charge about £10,000 a day for their services. That’s a lot of hamburgers.
These sorts of stings are a dime a dozen and go back to the ‘cash for questions’ stings of the 1980s. Mr Kwarteng and Mr Hancock did nothing illegal. MPs are allowed to have jobs outside of Parliament but they are not allowed to lobby for cash.
Whether they are paid or not, it still leaves a nasty taste for the rest of us who do not have this privilege.
Hang on. There’s a call coming through. They say they’re from ITV and they want me to go on I’m a celebrity, Get Me out of Here.
Have a good weekend.
Tom
by the Planning PR guru 