CAMILLA Cavendish recently gave an impassioned defence of MPs’ extra earnings in her Financial Times column,

After leaving journalism for a brief stint in David Cameron’s Downing Street policy unit, Cavendish was awarded a seat in the Lords five years ago. Commenting last week on the latest sleaze scandal to hit the Tories, she said she would ‘rather be represented by someone capable of commanding a high salary outside [Parliament], like Geoffrey Cox’ than presumably someone who spends their time fully focused on the well-paid job they were elected to do.

Little Venice’s curious comment drew me to her own entry in the House of Lords’ Register of Interests, where I can reveal she has been late to declare her own penchant for filthy lucre earned from advising and entertaining the corporate finance world. Her gigs include work for St James’s Place, the financial advisers forced to overhaul widely excessive pay and perks after a string of exposes by Cavendish’s former employer, The Sunday Times.

Little Venice is currently a paid adviser on social care to the Department of Health, while also acting in the same capacity to a venture capital fund specialising in healthcare and speaking at a social care conference organised by a healthcare data firm.

She also raked in fees from a speech to Later Life Lending, a provider of equity-release mortgages, often touted as a solution for people who need to draw money for their spiralling care costs. She declared that eight months after the event.

‘Politics needs talent,’ writes Cavendish. It also needs parliamentarians who can follow basic rules. Seven of Little Venice’s recently added interests were registered months after they took place – which leaves her repeatedly in breach of the Code of Conduct requiring registration within one month.