A TORY MP earned more than £1m in a second job advising a tax haven during lockdown.
Geoffrey Cox is thought to have been participating in Westminster votes from the British Virgin Islands (BVI) where he was working as a barrister.
The QC and former Attorney General is reported to have earned £900,000 in the past year working for law firm Withers, representing the government of the BVI, a British Overseas Territory.
He also earned around £130,000 from other legal work, on top of his £82,000 MP salary.
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It is reported by the Daily Mail that he cast his votes in Parliament via proxy while he worked 4000 miles away in the Caribbean for Withers, representing the government of the BVI in an inquiry into governance of the islands and possible corruption.
He is understood to have spent some of April and May in the tropical region, arriving on April 26 - the day the Commons was debating global corruption.
His register of financial interests shows he earned £156,916.08 for 140 hours' work between April 29 and May 31.
Sir Geoffrey has not commented on the reports this morning, however Dominic Raab, Justice Secretary, said his earnings were "legitimate" and "perfectly reasonable".
Asked on the BBC Today programme he said: " I think there are two key elements - one is transparency, that you have the declarations in the register of members financial interest, and secondly, ultimately it is for voters for any MP, myself included, to decide whether they think that people representing them have got the right priorities."
Mr Raab told Times Radio he ordered the inquiry into the BVI when he was Foreign Secretary, due to the "the allegations of misgovernance and very serious ones, including criminal wrongdoing".
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Asked by Times Radio about Sir Geoffrey's activities, he said: "I’m not going to get dragged into what individual MPs do, but actually having the former attorney general – and it wasn’t my decision, he was hired by the government of the BVI to advise them on how to correct and deal and address those allegations – actually, is a legitimate thing to do as long as it’s properly declared.
“And of course, it’s quite important in that Parliament, which is responsible residually for some areas of our relationship with the overseas territories, we’ve got some knowledge of what’s going on in those territories.”
It comes after a debate in the Commons last night over the Conservative Government's attempt to change the rules for investigating rule-breaking by MPs.
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This was prompted by the finding that former Tory MP Owen Paterson committed an "egregious breach" of the rules, earning as much as £100,000 a year as a consultant for two firms for which he lobbied the government.
Mr Paterson has since resigned.
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