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Lord Hanningfield faces suspension from Lords over claims for allowances Lord Hanningfield suspended from Lords for a year over allowance claims
(about 4 hours later)
Lord Hanningfield, who was accused of "clocking in" to parliament to receive an attendance allowance, is facing suspension from the House of Lords for the rest of the current parliament over his claims for allowances. Parliament's system for disciplining peers is under renewed scrutiny after a peer convicted of abusing expenses received a year's suspension from the House of Lords after being caught making invalid allowance claims for a second time.
The Lords privileges and conduct committee said the former Conservative council leader who was jailed in 2011 over his parliamentary expenses should face the maximum sanction after he was found to have claimed the allowance for 11 days on which he did no parliamentary work. MPs and pressure groups said that Lord Hanningfield should be ejected from the Houses of Parliament for good after he was found by the Lords' privileges and conduct committee on Monday to have claimed the allowance for 11 days on which he did no parliamentary work. In 2011, the former Conservative council leader was jailed over his parliamentary expenses.
The committee recommended that Hanningfield who was leader of Essex county council should repay the £3,300 which he had wrongly claimed. The committee's inquiry followed a Daily Mirror investigation into the peer which alleged that he had collected the attendance allowance on 11 days in July 2013 after spending as little as 21 minutes in parliament.
The privileges and conduct committee was considering allegations, printed in the Mirror, that he was caught collecting the attendance allowance after spending as little as 21 minutes in parliament. John Mann, the Labour MP for Bassetlaw, called on the government to introduce legislation in next month's Queen's speech to automatically expel anyone committing a criminal offence from the House of Lords.
Last week, Hanningfield told the BBC it did not matter how long he attended parliament as he was "a peer all the time"and described a £300 daily attendance allowance paid to peers as a "de facto salary". "Lord Hanningfield should be banned for life. If this were a case of a benefits cheat who repeatedly offended, he would receive a significant prison sentence," he said.
Peers had initially decided to order him to repay £3,300 and suspend him until the general election. Jonathan Isaby, chief executive of the TaxPayers' Alliance, said: "It's hard to imagine what else Lord Hanningfield could do to be thrown out of the House of Lords for good."
Hanningfield appeared before the committee last week to appeal against the decision before the final verdict was published. Following a complaint, the Lords' commissioner for standards and Hampshire's former chief constable, Paul Kernaghan, carried out an inquiry focusing on Hanningfield's claims during July 2013.
After his appearance, he told the BBC: "You're a peer all the time. It doesn't matter if you're here for 10 minutes or 10 hours." "Lord Hanningfield was unable to point to any specific work that he had undertaken on the 11 days covered by the commissioner's investigation," the committee said. "In our view it is clear that the daily allowance should be claimed only on days when parliamentary work has been undertaken.
He added: "You get a de facto salary of 30 grand." The money was needed to pay staff, he said. "We recommend that Lord Hanningfield be required to repay to the House the £3,300 he wrongly claimed and that he be suspended from the service of the house until the end of the current parliament," the committee said.
Hanningfield said he had submitted two doctor's letters to the committee, arguing it should consider his ill health. Sources close to the committee have insisted that Hanningfield has been given the harshest punishment available a ban until the end of this parliamentary session.
"I want them to let me get better," he said. In January, the Lords agreed two new sanctions for members who break rules they can be prevented from using house facilities, such as bars and restaurants, and can face suspension from financial support including expenses. However, these sanctions cannnot be used retrospectively against Hanningfield.
Hanningfield was jailed for nine months in 2011 he was convicted of six counts of false accounting relating to nearly £14,000 of claims. He was suspended from the Lords in November 2011 and returned to parliament in April 2012. When confronted by the Mirror, Hanningfield said that he could name another 50 peers who were also coming into parliament to claim expenses. However, when asked by the committee about this, he declined to give any names. Hanningfield told the parliamentary authorities that one of the reasons he needed to claim the money was to pay a staffing bill. "Bruce is employed by me to care for Theodore (my Bernese mountain dog) and my chickens whilst I am in London. He also helps me to perform various administrative tasks (i.e. scanning, typing etc.) when working from home," he said.
Those allegations were entirely separate from the ones made by the Mirror. He lost the Conservative whip in 2010. Hanningfield was jailed for nine months in 2011 after being convicted of six counts of false accounting relating to nearly £14,000 of claims. He was suspended from the Lords in November 2011 and returned to parliament in April 2012.
He was also was ordered to repay more than £37,000 under the 2002 Proceeds of Crime Act or face 15 further months in jail.
Speaking on Monday morning, Hanningfield, a 73-year-old former pig farmer, stopped short of offering an apology for his latest transgression, but said that he had not known what he was doing was wrong and intends to return to the House of Lords after his suspension.
"Following my release from prison I was suffering from psychological and physical health problems, I was anxious about returning to the house following my suspension and, while it was thoughtless of me to claim the full allowance on the 11 dates in question, considering I spent so little time on the parliamentary estate, I never attempted to hide any of these transgressions, simply because I was unaware that what I was doing was wrong.
"I regret that my mistakes have ultimately resulted in me being suspended from the house but would like to assure the people and organisations that I was in the process of helping that I will continue with the work that I have started, outside the Lords, to ensure that our efforts will not have been wasted upon my return," he said.
In his statement, Hanningfield again emphasised his belief that many other peers also claim the £300 a day supplement as a form of salary.
"Like many other Lords, I believe the allowance to be a 'de facto' salary, something which the Commissioner himself conceded in his report, is an acceptable way to view it.
"As I have stated many times before, I claim the allowance on 100 days during the year, which amounts to an annual salary of £30,000 and no more. I also consider myself to be a working peer every single day of the year and regularly conduct parliamentary work … from my home in Essex.
"And so, even if I am not speaking in the house or participating in a debate or vote, I am still required to travel to the house in order to claim the allowance, just as there are many more days a year where I will work all day and not claim at all," he said.
In another report, also published today, the committee recommends that any peer sentenced to a term of imprisonment should be deemed to have breached the code of conduct and be considered for sanction by the committee. The report also found that when signing to claim for the daily allowance, members should give an explicit written undertaking that in doing so they are "acting on their personal honour".