Monday, December 23, 2024

Nigel Farage earning more than £1m a year while MP

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Getty Images Nigel Farage at a campaign event in MaidstoneGetty Images

Nigel Farage has revealed he is earning well over a £1m a year from work he does outside parliament, in addition to his job as an MP.

It is thought his outside income is significantly higher than that of any other member of parliament.

The majority of the Reform UK leader’s earnings come from his work presenting on the GB News television channel – which alone pays him almost £1.2m a year.

Reform UK have been approached for a comment.

The disclosures were made in the latest Register of Members’ Financial Interests, published by parliament.

Mr Farage is obliged to declare all his outside earnings following his election as MP for Clacton in Essex in July.

As a member of parliament Mr Farage has a basic annual salary of £91,346 plus expenses for his office and staff, and housing costs either in his constituency or in London.

Over and above that he has declared he is paid £97,928.40 a month by GB News Ltd for 32 hours work a month presenting on its TV channel, equating to an annual salary from GB News of £1,175,140.80.

Mr Farage suspended his show, which airs Monday to Thursday each week, to focus on the election campaign, but he has now returned to the channel.

The Clacton MP said he has also been paid £16,597.22 for recording personalised video messages for individuals through the Cameo.com website.

In his declaration he said he works around 24 hours a month for Cameo.

The US-based service charges $90 (£70) for each short video recorded by Mr Farage.

Its website describes him as a “former UK politician” and says “customers can request messages for a variety of occasions, from birthdays and retirements to roasts and motivational pep talks. Nigel is often asked to reference his political views on Brexit, immigration, and the Reform UK party”.

Other earnings declared by Mr Farage include £4,000 a month from the Daily Telegraph newspaper for 16 hours work a month writing articles – and income from social media including £1,551.29 from X and £853 from Meta, which owns Facebook.

The total time Mr Farage estimates he spends on work outside parliament for his TV, video-recording and newspaper writing equates to around 72 hours a month, the equivalent of nine full working days.

Under other interests Mr Farage has disclosed he took a trip to the US after the assassination attempt on Donald Trump in July. The trip was funded by a private donation from Christopher Harborne, who is a crypto currency investor who has previously donated to Reform UK, the Brexit Party and Boris Johnson.

Mr Farage described the purpose of the visit as “to support a friend who was almost killed and to represent Clacton on the world stage”.

He estimated the cost of the flights and accommodation for himself and one staff member to be £32,836.

Mr Farage disclosed one further trip to speak at the National Conservatism Conference in Brussels in April this year, putting the cost for the single night visit to Belgium for himself, a staffer and “security provision” at £9,253.50.

That trip was funded by George Cottrell, a former aide to Mr Farage who spent eight months in jail in the US in 2017 after he was caught in an FBI sting operation telling undercover officers he could launder money for them.

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