From January 2015 to June 2017, Geoffrex Cox earned more from his side job as a barrister than in his main job as Conservative MP for Torridge and West Devon. Meanwhile, he’s also the only MP in Devon not to rank higher than ‘average’ in any measurement of his parliamentary work, according to the data on TheyWorkForYou.com. If I were one of Geoffrey’s constituents, this information would have me wondering if my MP was putting my interests first.

Yet he’s not my MP — instead, I live in Exeter, where I’m represented by Labour’s Ben Bradshaw. I am a science writer, and I therefore like to base decisions on evidence, including when voting. I consequently wanted to find data on which to judge how good a job Ben’s doing ahead of the June 8 UK election. I remembered that TheyWorkForYou brings together useful data, including ‘member’s interests’ information on MPs’ extra income, and some aspects of their performance.

Being unable to tell much by looking at Ben’s information alone, I decided to look at other MPs for comparison. Specifically, I chose the other MPs in the county Exeter is in, Devon. It’s not a wholly balanced comparison, as Ben is the only Labour MP, whereas all the others in the county are Conservative. However, the exercise was initially mostly for my own interest in seeing who represents my local area.

TheyWorkForYou makes a specific disclaimer: “Please note that numbers do not measure quality. Also, representatives may do other things not currently covered by this site.” So clearly, this exercise does not provide a complete picture of MP performance — but it does give some indicators on which to base a ranking. Overall, each MP clearly has different focusses, and many are more active in some areas than others.

Here are the headlines:

Torridge and West Devon’s Geoffrey Cox declared £466,373 earnings from barrister work done and to be done between January 2015 and June 12 2017. That work took him 896 hours, or roughly 7 hours a week, and he was therefore paid at a rate of over £520 per hour. This compares to an MP salary of £76,011. It’s also worth noting that Geoffrey was found guilty of a serious breach of parliamentary rules for failing to declare £400,000 of earnings.

Can, and should, MPs fit in roughly an extra day’s work a week into their other duties? And should that work be better paid than their primary job, strongly risking a conflict of interest? My answer to these questions would be no.

That’s especially true because Geoffrey’s performance in other areas tracked by TheyWorkForYou is underwhelming. He comes second-bottom in Devon for the percentage of votes he’s attended and the number of debates he’s spoken in. He’s had an average number of answers to written questions, and WriteToThem.com’s measure of how soon he responded to messages from constituents is medium. These latter two are Geoffrey’s best-performing areas. I’d be absolutely delighted if Geoffrey or any of his representatives wants to explain why his metrics appear so poor — they’d be welcome to comment below or find me on Twitter at @andyextance.

The only other Devon MP with significant side-earnings is East Devon Conservative Hugo Swire, from two side jobs. One is with trade promotion organisation the Commonwealth Enterprise and Investment Council, earning £24,000 for 120 hours work per year, working out as an hourly rate of £200. The other is with KIS France, a manufacturer of photo booths and mini labs, for which he’s paid £36,000 for 96 hours work, working out as £375 per hour. These jobs combined take around four hours per week on average.

However, Hugo does much better on other metrics than Geoffrey, ranking as above average in the number of debates he spoke in, and the number of answers he received to written questions. So while his side jobs would make me uncomfortable, the TheyWorkForYou data suggests he’s doing a decent job for his constituents.

What about my MP in Exeter, Ben Bradshaw? He declares a measly £500 in extra income for doing ComRes opinion surveys. His best area is the number of debates spoken in which, at 76, is ‘well above average’ according to TheyWorkForYou.

However, one metric appears extremely worrying: The percentage of parliamentary votes he’s been involved in is lower than any other Devon MP, at just 67.45%, worse than Geoffrey’s 75.16%. I found this sufficiently disturbing to have been completely put off voting for Ben — until he turned up on my doorstep to canvass a couple of weeks back. Then, he explained that governing party MPs are forced to vote to ensure their legislation passes. Opposition MPs do not have to do this and may in fact be encouraged not to vote rather than to oppose legislation. He also claimed his past voting records have been very good — although I haven’t looked to check this is the case. However, he was sufficiently persuasive that I am now intending to vote for him.

Of the remaining nine Devon MPs, all have a similar extra income level to Ben. Some have TheyWorkForYou metrics where they’re below average, and others where they’re above average. That makes perfect sense — it’s how averages work — so they all seem to be doing a decent enough job in my eyes.

However two stand out as doing exceptional jobs: Sarah Wollaston, Conservative MP for Totnes, in particular achieves above average or well above average ratings in every area. Kevin Foster, Conservative MP for Torbay, is similarly well above average or average in every area. But he also spoke in the highest number of debates of any Devon MP, 128. These two deserve special praise. Although my natural leanings would not be to vote Conservative, I would certainly consider doing so if I was in their constituencies. I hope they get re-elected.

Whatever you think of all this, if you can, please vote on June 8. The number of people who don’t vote often exceeds the winning majorities. And whether or not the party you like wins, they get money for every vote for them. If you need them Vote For Policies can help you decide who to vote for, and Swap My Vote can help your vote count.

If anyone else wants to get into the nitty-gritty of the data, I’ve collated it in this Google spreadsheet. If you’re reading this in the UK and you’re outside Devon, you could perhaps use these data to compare your own MP against, or do a similar exercise for your own county. I’d be interested to see if Ben’s story about Labour MPs voting less in general than Conservatives holds water, and if there are any other MPs with worse performance than Geoffrey. Some ugly-looking charts I made from the TheyWorkForYou data also follow:

Ranking for Devon MPs based on TheyWorkForYou data

Debates Devon MPs spoke in and the number of answers they got to written questions over the last year, based on TheyWorkForYou data.