Withers
- Tory MP Sir Geoffrey Cox has been criticised for a £400,000-a-year side job as a consultant.
- A video uncovered by Insider shows some of the work he does at £813-an-hour for law firm Withers.
- Footage shows Cox giving tips to super-rich clients of the firm in a one-hour seminar.
Video uncovered by Insider shows some of the work Tory MP Sir Geoffrey Cox does to earn his £400,000 salary in his second job as a consultant to law firm Withers.
Cox joined Withers as "consultant global counsel" in September 2020, 7 months after leaving his role as the UK Attorney General.
He registered his salary as £468,000 plus VAT annually for 48 hours of work a month, which works out at an hourly rate of around £813. Earlier this month, he registered a reduction in his work to 41 hours a month, for £400,000 plus VAT.
Cox appears to have spent weeks at a time working for Withers from the British Virgin Islands in person, and participating in the UK parliament from thousands of miles away, the Daily Mail reported.
Cox has become a lightning rod for criticism after attention turned to MPs' outside jobs, part of a wider reckoning on parliamentary conflicts of interest.
Insider unearthed some video evidence of Cox's highly-paid efforts for Withers, including a one-hour webinar for the firm's wealthy clients.
The webinar is hosted here via Zoom.
In the session, Cox reassured watchers there would be "no change to the non-dom regime", a reference to non-domiciled tax status which allows people to live in the UK without incurring tax on much of their overseas wealth.
A trailer for the event with Cox, published around a month after he joined Withers, gives its title as "the challenges and opportunities of Brexit: insights from someone at the heart of events."
In the trailer he said he would use his experience in government to predict how the UK's post-Brexit future would play out, and other areas where he said it would be less certain.
"What I'm hoping to do is map those areas where we can be confident; where we can confidently say there are a range of options; and frankly where it's speculation", he said.
"I hope in all of those three areas to create a roadmap where people will feel when they come away from the webinar with my colleagues at Withers that they have a more confident feel for what is likely to happen and for the plans they need to make."
"It's important that we should address all of the various interests and concerns," Cox said. The first interest and concern he raised was those of "high net worth individuals."
A spokesperson for Prime Minister Boris Johnson appeared disdainful of time-consuming second jobs like Cox's.
The official told journalists in a briefing on Tuesday: "An MP's primary job is and must be to serve their constituents and to represent their interests in Parliament."
Cox's page on the Withers website makes scant reference of his job as an MP, putting it only under the "membership" tab.
Cox has only spoken in one Parliamentary debate since February 2020.
He sustained heavy criticism after a Daily Mail report revealed he worked from the British Virgin Islands during April and May 2021, and voted remotely in Parliamentary proceedings by proxy.
Cox is also working for the British Virgin Islands government, helping it participate in an inquiry, launched by the UK Foreign Office, into governance and corruption on the British overseas territory.
Cox's office did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.