Former minister takes Al Fayed shilling

Another former government minister can be added to the list, published in the April issue of Labour Research, of senior Conservative MPs boosting their earnings with highly paid posts outside of the House of Commons. Last month, the Conservative MP and former junior minister Charles Wardle revealed that he had accepted a £120,000-a-year part-time directorship from the owner of Harrods, Mohamed Al Fayed. It was Fayed's claims of political sleaze which helped destroy the government of John Major and the political careers of former MPs Neil Hamilton, Jonathan Aitken and Tim Smith.

Strangely, Wardle was the junior Home Office minister who rejected Fayed's requests for a British passport in 1993.

The move, which will see the MP almost triple his parliamentary salary for two days' work a week, had been cleared with the Tory whips office and with the parliamentary commissioner for standards Elizabeth Filkin. In his employment contract, lodged with Elizabeth Filkin for scrutiny, Wardle says he will not be required "to promote, ask questions, make speeches, lobby or represent in any way" Fayed's interests at Westminster.

Despite having been reapppointed as a candidate, Wardle has subsequently announced that he is standing down as an MP at the next general election after his part-time job raised fierce constituency opposition. Meanwhile the new Conservative shadow chancellor Michael Portillo has blotted his copybook. He was forced to apologise to MPs after he broke parliamentary rules by failing to declare his interest in the oil and chemicals multinational company Kerr McGee during a Commons debate on petrol duty. Portillo is an adviser on international affairs to the oil group in a contract worth between £5,000 and £10,000 a year.

Portillo, who described his failure to declare the interest as an "oversight", made his apology at the earliest opportunity after being reported to Elizabeth Filkin by Labour MP Christopher Leslie and so will probably avoid rebuke.