Nigel Farage appears to have become the highest-earning MP, having made almost £1.2m a year from GB News.

In the first register of interests of the new parliament, the Reform UK MP declared that he was earning £97,900 a month as a presenter for GB News, the channel co-owned by the hedge fund billionaire Paul Marshall.

Farage also revealed that his visit to the US on 17 July – in the aftermath of the assassination attempt on Donald Trump – cost £32,000 and was funded by Christopher Harborne, a Thailand-based crypto investor who previously gave millions to the Brexit party. The purpose was recorded as “to support a friend who was almost killed and to represent Clacton on the world stage”.

A further £9,250 trip to the National Conservatism Conference in Brussels in April was funded by George Cottrell, an unofficial aide to Farage.

Cottrell, a high-profile figure in Farage’s entourage, spent eight months in an American jail in 2017 after being convicted of offering money-laundering services on the dark web. The crime was committed in 2014, before Cottrell worked for either the anti-EU party or Farage.

The MP’s social media earnings were also revealed, showing that he made £1,550 through X and £853 through Meta, as well as £4,000 from Cameo videos. The Clacton MP is also paid £4,000 a month by the Daily Telegraph.

Jo Maugham, founder of the Good Law Project, said: “You look at these numbers and you wonder, has Nigel Farage catapulted himself to the top of the list of highest earners in Clacton? Great for him, but it’s not really public service, is it?”

Previously, the highest-earning MP was Geoffrey Cox, the Tory MP, who also works as a barrister. He earns £293,400 from law firm Withers, and also collected a payment of £379,000 from an Indian chambers in July for work carried out in 2016 to 2018.