Hague lands job with JCB

WILLIAM Hague is to take up a £45,000-a-year post as a political adviser to the construction equipment company JCB. His move comes two months after standing down as leader of the Conservative Party.

News of the appointment coincided with Haguue's return to public life on Monday when he made his first Commons speech from the backbenches for nine years, tearing into the Government over its handling of the foot-and-mouth crisis.

Hague, who is still only 40, is to take on the role of political and economic adviser to JCB, a long-time donor to the Tory cause. The MP also plans to join the board of AES Engineering as a non-executive director.

Hague, who worked as a consultant for the international McKinsey management group before entering the Commons in 1989, is well placed to put his political and business experience to good use in the commercial world.

Fellow MPs expected him to pick up directorships and advisory roles after he decided to quit the Tory leadership in the wake of the party's second successive General Election defeat in June.

It will be of little surprise that he should link up with JCB, one of Europe's leading manufacturers of construction equipment. The firm, founded at the end of the Second World War by the late Joseph Cyril Bamford, remains privately owned.

The job with AES Engineering appears to result from Hague's Yorkshire roots. The firm, which designs and manufactures precision mechanical seals for petrol pumps, is based in Rotherham, the MP's home town.

As Opposition leader, Hague was paid more than £100,000 a year. But when he relinquished the post, he fell back on his standard MP's pay of just over £50,000. The £45,000 from JCB, plus the undisclosed sum as non-executive director for AES Engineering, will restore his income level.

Friends at Westminster stressed that he will remain focused on his work as MP for Richmond, North Yorkshire, a seat he intends to contest again at the next General Election.