Paris Gourtsoyannis: Tory MP Douglas Ross is running a fine line

The row over the MP's other job isn't going to go away, writes Paris Gourtsoyannis

Conservative MP Douglas Ross says he will quit his second job as a referee, but only after next years World Cup.

As the only team of Scots to make it to next year’s World Cup in Russia, you would think that the elite refereeing squad that includes Douglas Ross could at least count on some home support. But few in Westminster will be cheering when the Scottish Conservative MP runs out next summer.

To the opposition, it is an outrage for an MP to skip parliamentary business for a lucrative second job –especially when the debate and vote that Ross missed last week was on a controversial, embattled welfare policy that affects many of his constituents.

To his own colleagues as well, his likely absence on a regular basis poses a serious headache and risks a breakdown in parliamentary discipline when it is least needed. And it isn’t going to go away if, as was reported this weekend, Ross is allowed to go to Russia before he hangs up his boots and linesman’s flag.

In fairness to him – and one opposition MP admitted as much to me last week – feelings on both sides of the House are probably strengthened by the knowledge that Ross’s second job is a hell of a lot of fun, what with flying around the world and hobnobbing with football stars. While they were filing through the lobbies last Wednesday, he was shaking hands with Lionel Messi.

Ross isn’t the only MP to have outside interests – far from it. Parliamentarians are elected in part for their experience, and we would no more expect them to hang up their professional personas in the Members’ Cloakroom than we would any other aspect of their knowledge and judgment. For that reason, attempts to ban second jobs have repeatedly come and gone.

Even the SNP MP John McNally, who nailed his cameo at PMQs last week by showing Prime Minister Theresa May the red card while asking about Ross’s absence, has kept in touch with his old career.

A barber by trade, he still owns his hairdressers shop, and I would be astonished if he doesn’t give the odd regular a short back and sides when he’s in the constituency.

That’s before considering the likes of George Osborne, who was already on five jobs and counting when the snap general election came along and hastened the end of one of them – being an MP. He showed every sign of wanting to stay on, before it meant campaigning to keep his seat.

And if second jobs are wrong in principle, then that principle also has to extend to the SNP leader at Westminster, who earns tens of thousands of pounds a year for two chairmanships which, according to the Register of Members’ Interests, only take him away from his day job for the equivalent of a couple of days a year.

The Commons is full of practicing doctors, lawyers and business people, whose skills and experience is valuable to their work as MPs. Many have suggested, straining for a defence like a centre forward leaping to connect with a corner, that Ross’s refereeing career brings much-needed variety to the collective experience of the Commons.

Of course that’s true, but it is a bit niche. Football referees suffer appalling abuse, but it probably doesn’t need legislation to fix. You don’t need to have a second job to be accused of being a neglectful MP. For all her skill as an orator, Mhairi Black is facing claims that she is rarely seen in the Commons chamber, and is bottom of the voting record table despite having nothing else to distract her except a couple of newspaper columns.

But the truth is, there are second jobs and there are second jobs. It may not be fair that Ross is in the spotlight because he does it under floodlights, and often on Sky Sports. But that’s politics.

Being an elite referee isn’t something you can keep your hand in at while fitting it around parliamentary work, like being a lawyer, or a board member, or a lecturer, or even a doctor. That, in itself, is an issue – you could hardly keep working as a policeman, a nurse or a social worker while being an MP. Salaries were introduced for MPs in 1911 so that the poor could play a full part in the political process, but only some members are now able to keep up with their careers while serving in parliament.

If it was just weekend Scottish Premiership games no more than a few hours’ drive away, Ross might be in the clear. But he is likely to be missing from Westminster repeatedly on weekday evenings for the rest of the season, and that is before Russia 2018.

If the Scottish refereeing team is selected for the World Cup, they will be away for four weeks, plus a two-week training camp beforehand. All of that is likely to take place before the summer recess.

Meanwhile, Brexit legislation will start to come thick and fast, and votes that the government won’t be able to just abstain on will pile up before the holidays.

How are the whips going to justify that? They don’t have to explain themselves to opposition MPs, or even voters in Ross’s constituency.

They do, however, have to maintain discipline among other MPs in a minority government trying to keep it together in the most challenging political climate anyone can remember.

It’s not for no reason that the current parliament is being compared to the one from November 1974 to 1979, captured in the brilliant play This House by James Graham. As then, when it comes to pushing Brexit legislation through, MPs will be called from their sick beds if necessary – but you can’t be called off the line in Moscow.

Last week one of Ross’s colleagues told me: “I don’t know what the problem is.” After weeks of late-night votes, fellow Conservative MPs may take a different view if Ross is allowed to go to Russia. Already it is clear that some among the Scottish Conservative group at Westminster take a dim view of his absence.

Ruth Davidson may think she has solved the problem by telling her MP to give up his other career after reaching the peak. In reality, Ross is on a booking with a long match ahead of him.