Home Sweet (Designated) Home - 2
Another Sunday, another expenses scandal - this time involving a Labour peer and friend of the Prime Minister, Gordon Brown.
According to the Sunday Times, Baroness Goudie - a Labour Donor and fundraiser who lives with her husband in a £1.5 million house in London - has claimed £230,000 in expenses by saying a flat in Glasgow is her main home.
Here's are some key extracts from the article:
"Baroness Goudie .....has lived since childhood in London where her two sons grew up and her husband works as a leading barrister.
However, the baroness tells the Lords her main address is 400 miles away in a Glasgow apartment block. A close neighbour said she had not seen Goudie there for some time.
This has allowed Goudie to claim subsistence allowances intended as payments for peers who are based outside the capital and need help to meet the cost of accommodation in London.
On Friday Goudie acknowledged she did not spend much of her time in the Glasgow flat, although she was there “frequently”. She said she needed a “main residence” in Scotland because it was the base of her non-parliamentary activities.
In the past six months The Sunday Times has identified more than 20 peers whose claims are questionable.
After attending school on the outskirts of London, Goudie lived in Brent where she served as a councillor for several years. She was employed in a series of London-based jobs before becoming a freelance public affairs consultant.
Her strong association with the capital is reflected in her title: Goudie of Roundwood in the London Borough of Brent. Her husband James is a QC who worked in the same London chambers as Blair and Derry Irvine, the former lord chancellor.
The couple lived in Hampstead throughout the 1990s before buying a mews house in Belgravia, one of the most expensive residential areas of the capital, in 2002. They also have a home in Cape Cod, on the east coast of America.
However, since public records of peers’ expenses were first published in April 2001, Goudie has claimed that her main home is in Glasgow. She bought her flat in the city for £200,000 in April 2001.
The Glasgow address has enabled her to claim more than £150,000 in accommodation expenses from the Lords over the past eight years. She also claimed more than £80,000 for travel between the Lords and Glasgow (all figures include an estimate for 2008-9).
A neighbour at the Glasgow flats said she had not seen the baroness for months. A clerk at her husband’s chambers was adamant that the QC did not live in Glasgow, but was resident in London.
Goudie has clearly spent some time at the Glasgow address, but questions remain about whether it really is her main home and why she needed to claim £20,000 a year in night subsistence to live in London when she has an expensive home within walking distance of the Lords."
The full text can be read on-line at: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/
According to the Sunday Times, Baroness Goudie - a Labour Donor and fundraiser who lives with her husband in a £1.5 million house in London - has claimed £230,000 in expenses by saying a flat in Glasgow is her main home.
Here's are some key extracts from the article:
"Baroness Goudie .....has lived since childhood in London where her two sons grew up and her husband works as a leading barrister.
However, the baroness tells the Lords her main address is 400 miles away in a Glasgow apartment block. A close neighbour said she had not seen Goudie there for some time.
This has allowed Goudie to claim subsistence allowances intended as payments for peers who are based outside the capital and need help to meet the cost of accommodation in London.
On Friday Goudie acknowledged she did not spend much of her time in the Glasgow flat, although she was there “frequently”. She said she needed a “main residence” in Scotland because it was the base of her non-parliamentary activities.
In the past six months The Sunday Times has identified more than 20 peers whose claims are questionable.
After attending school on the outskirts of London, Goudie lived in Brent where she served as a councillor for several years. She was employed in a series of London-based jobs before becoming a freelance public affairs consultant.
Her strong association with the capital is reflected in her title: Goudie of Roundwood in the London Borough of Brent. Her husband James is a QC who worked in the same London chambers as Blair and Derry Irvine, the former lord chancellor.
The couple lived in Hampstead throughout the 1990s before buying a mews house in Belgravia, one of the most expensive residential areas of the capital, in 2002. They also have a home in Cape Cod, on the east coast of America.
However, since public records of peers’ expenses were first published in April 2001, Goudie has claimed that her main home is in Glasgow. She bought her flat in the city for £200,000 in April 2001.
The Glasgow address has enabled her to claim more than £150,000 in accommodation expenses from the Lords over the past eight years. She also claimed more than £80,000 for travel between the Lords and Glasgow (all figures include an estimate for 2008-9).
A neighbour at the Glasgow flats said she had not seen the baroness for months. A clerk at her husband’s chambers was adamant that the QC did not live in Glasgow, but was resident in London.
Goudie has clearly spent some time at the Glasgow address, but questions remain about whether it really is her main home and why she needed to claim £20,000 a year in night subsistence to live in London when she has an expensive home within walking distance of the Lords."
The full text can be read on-line at: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/
