Take Rees-Mogg. He is paid £500 an hour for his extra-parliamentary work!! Yet he votes to take £20 a week off the poorest and impose pay freezes on nurses, teachers and other public servants.
Rees-Mogg received dividends from Somerset Capital Management (SCM), the investment firm he set up in 2007. An analysis of its accounts shows that in the past two years, the fund has seen profits almost double and it has paid £47m to members over that period.
- Mr Rees-Mogg owns at least 15% of the firm which according to one financial expert’s estimate could have put him in line for a pay-out of around £7m since 2016.
- Asked if the figure of £7m is accurate, Mr Rees-Mogg told Dispatches: “The amount that I received is not for public disclosure. I’m entitled to the same privacy in my affairs as anyone else in parliament is.”
- Mr Rees-Mogg declares in his House of Commons Register of Interests that he is paid £500 an hour for his work at SCM and takes home around £15,000 a month on top of his MPs salary.
SCM invests in emerging markets like China and Russia and one expert said that the fall in the value of the pound since the referendum result has helped SCM’s profits. Mr Rees-Mogg denied that the increase in SCM’s earnings was related to Brexit describing such claims as “living in cloud cuckoo land”.
He also rejected claims that SCM’s decision in the past year to open two new funds in Dublin rather than London had anything to with Brexit. “Our decision to do it predates Brexit,” he told the programme.
Should people in public office benefit to this extent from their vested interests? Should they be allowed to make huge personal profit from things such as Covid and Brexit?
The sleaze is a stinky cesspit!!