Image: UK Parliament [CC BY 3.0]
Labour MP tops list of MPs earning fees for university speeches
Former higher education minister David Lammy was paid more than £12,500 to deliver five speeches at universities and students’ unions in 2018 and 2019, Research Professional News can reveal.
The MP for Tottenham received a total of £12,652.80 at a rate equivalent to £588.50 per hour for the work, according to the latest register of MPs’ financial interests.
Research Professional News has approached David Lammy for comment.
As we reported in December, Lammy has received more money for speeches from universities than any other MP over the last two years. At that time he had accepted £2,317.80 from Bournemouth University for two hours work on an October 2018 speech, £2,295 from the University of the West of England for two hours work on a speech in March last year, and £1,640 for an appearance at Kent Union—the University of Kent’s students’ union—in March 2019, which required 1.5 hours work.
The latest register shows he also received £4,100 from City University for delivering its anniversary lecture on 26 September last year, for which he allocated 12 hours of work; and £2,300 from Imperial College London’s students’ union for giving a speech on 22 October, which took a total of four hours including preparation.
City and the Imperial College Union have been approached for comment.
A spokesman for the University of Bournemouth told us in December that Lammy had visited Bournemouth University as a part of Black History Month, while Kent Union told us Lammy appeared on a panel at its Africa Summit, where he spoke about the African diaspora and Brexit. UWE was approached for comment.
December’s Research professional News investigation found just two other MPs had received a fee for speaking on campus. Labour MP for Aberavon Stephen Kinnock received £1,000 after taking part in a panel discussion at the University of Warwick in October 2019; and Nicky Morgan, a former Conservative MP for Loughborough, received £2,125 from Edge Hill University for its “An Evening with Nicky Morgan” event in October 2018 while still a member of parliament.
Kinnock told Research Professional News that since becoming an MP in 2015 he had “taken part in a number of student events and the panel at Warwick was the only event for which I have received any remuneration”.
“I accepted Warwick’s offer because it involved me taking time out of my personal diary to attend the question time session and an evening dinner, which, as a result, required an overnight stay,” he said.
Warwick said the payment to Kinnock, which came from its Department of Economics, was made available to all external speakers taking part in the Economics Question Time event.
Research Professional News approached Nicky Morgan for comment.
Following our initial investigation, Jo Grady, general secretary of the University and College Union, told Research Professional News that it was the “marketisation of higher education [which] means that some universities like to compete to build the flashiest buildings or host the best soirées with the most important guests”.
“The fact that MPs are jumping on this gravy train just feels a bit grubby,” she said. “Should they be accepting money from the taxpayer or student fees to speak?”