WILLIAM Hague will be urged to end his four-year exile from frontbench politics if David Davis wins the race for the Conservative leadership.

Mr Davis hopes to form a "team of all the talents" by tempting the Richmond MP back to the shadow cabinet -possibly as shadow chancellor.

Mr Hague has sat on the backbenches since quitting as leader the day after the Tories' defeat at the 2001 election.

Mr Davis, the shadow home secretary who was overwhelming favourite to succeed Michael Howard until Kenneth Clarke entered the race, has yet to officially announce his candidature.

But he said yesterday: "My aim would be to find all the talents we could and that means bringing in first-class performers like William and Ken (Clarke)."

Mr Hague rejected overtures from Mr Howard to take a frontbench job in 2003, but retains his reputation as one of the brightest talents on the Conservative benches.

However, a stumbling block to his return to the frontbench would be his lucrative earnings through directorships, speeches and newspaper columns - estimated at £1m a year.

In the latest annual register of MPs' interests, Mr Hague registered no fewer than 46 speeches and "one-man theatre shows", worth up to £15,000 an appearance.

In fact, Mr Hague was so busy he paid his former aide, George Osborne, to write some of his speeches for him.

And his income was topped up by the £200,000-a-year from the News of the World for a weekly column and serialisation rights for his biography of ex-prime minister Pitt the Younger.

Mr Clarke, the former chancellor under John Major, has been buoyed by polls suggesting he is the favoured choice of Conservative party members.

The other known rivals to Mr Davis are shadow foreign secretary Liam Fox, education spokesman David Cameron and work and pensions spokesman Malcolm Rifkind.