Lords a Leaping

Here's a great story about UKIP from the BBC web site - apparently the party believes it should have greater representation in the unelected House of Lords, but I wonder if this is another institution they wish to abolish, like the European Parliament, while living the high life on tax free allowances and generous expenses?

I think we should be told.      

UKIP demands more seats in Lords

By Ross Hawkins BBC  Political correspondent

Lord Pearson is one of three UKIP representatives in the Upper House

UKIP is demanding more representatives in the House of Lords after its performance in the European elections.

In an interview with the Today programme, UKIP's Lord Pearson accused the government of dishonesty for failing to grant the party new peers.

The coalition was committed to a policy that should give UKIP a bigger presence in the Lords, he said.

But the peer, who briefly led UKIP in 2010, said ministers had made clear they had no intention of delivering.

UKIP currently has three representatives in the Lords, all defectors from the Conservatives.

In a letter sent to the Cabinet Office, seen by the BBC, Lord Pearson said the government's failure to appoint UKIP members to the Lords represented the "sort of behaviour which makes the political class so increasingly unpopular with real people".

'Transparently dishonest'

Writing to the Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude, he said the election results, which topped the polls in the European elections with 27.5% of the vote, made UKIP's case "even stronger than it was before".

UKIP leader Nigel Farage - who has petitioned David Cameron for greater representation in the Lords in the past - is now expected to step up the party's campaign for peers.


In the coalition agreement, the government agreed that Lords should be appointed to make the Upper House reflect the share of the vote secured by the parties in the last general election.

An analysis by University College London suggested UKIP would need 23 extra peers to meet the commitment.

Lord Pearson told Today: "Our democracy requires that we have more than three peers in the House of Lords when we're getting 27% of the vote in the latest national election. I mean it is transparently dishonest.

"It is dishonest for over a period of four years to go one saying we're going to do this and then making it perfectly clear that we've no intention of it."

Under review

The government policy set out in the Coalition Agreement remains in place.

But in a letter to Lord Pearson in 2010 David Cameron said he had no intention of increasing the number of UKIP peers.

A Cabinet Office spokesman said its position was unchanged but the prime minister would continue to keep the numbers of minority parties in the Lords under review.

Since May 2010 160 peers have been created. The Green Party of England and Wales was granted a seat in the Lords last year.

Last year, Lord Pearson suggested in a letter to the prime minister that UKIP peers would support the government most of the time.

He told Today that would no longer apply.

Yon Birkie Ca'd a Lord

Here's another example of why the Westminster Parliament is regarded so cynically these days as a 'noble' lord who was jailed for fiddling his expenses is given what amounts to a slap over the wrists after claiming attendance fees on days when he carried out no real work.

Now, personally speaking, I'd get rid of the House of Lords but I wondered to myself what difference there is between Lord Hanningfield and Gordon Brown, the sometime Labour MP for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath?

Because the former Labour leader and Prime Minister claims a full-time salary for his day job in the House of Commons, yet he spend a great deal of his time out of the country, 70 days a year reportedly at the Abu Dhabi campus of New York University.

So it seems to me that if the test is whether or not a politician is entitled to be paid is that they are carrying out legitimate parliamentary work, then surely Gordon Brown cannot be entitled to draw his MP's salary when he is out of the UK on non-parliamentary business.       


Anger as lords fail to expel expenses cheat

Lord Hanningfield claimed the daily attendance allowance on 11 days in July 2013 when he had not undertaken any parliamentary work

Lord Hanningfield claimed the daily attendance allowance on 11 days in July 2013 when he had not undertaken any parliamentary work PA: Press Association

By Sam Coates - The Times

The House of Lords came under fire yesterday after it failed to expel a peer who claimed expenses on days he did not do any work.

Lord Hanningfield, a former Tory leader of Essex Council who was also jailed in 2011 over his parliamentary expenses, was given the maximum possible punishment over a fresh breach after an investigation by a Lords watchdog.

Paul Kernaghan, the Lords Commissioner for Standards, who is an ex-Hampshire chief constable, found the peer claimed the daily attendance allowance on 11 days in July 2013 when he had not undertaken any parliamentary work, and in doing so “failed to act on his personal honour”.

However the decision by the House of Lords Privileges and Conduct Committee drew fire for failing to expel him altogether, even though it does not currently have the power to do so.

John Mann, a Labour MP, 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. The Bassetlaw MP said: “A one-year ban is hopelessly inadequate. 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.

“A lifetime ban is the only appropriate punishment for the ‘clocking in’ Lord Hanningfield.”

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.

“It’s welcome news that he’s been suspended for the rest of this Parliament but taxpayers are right to be angry that he’ll be back on the red benches in a year’s time. The reputation of Parliament will be dragged even deeper into the mud if he has the cheek to take another penny from the taxpayer.

“The system should be reformed so those with criminal convictions can be expelled permanently.”

The watchdog’s inquiry focussed on 11 days in July 2013 when he spent less than 40 minutes in the parliamentary estate.

“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.”

In a statement after the release of the report, Lord Hanningfield said he regarded his peer’s allowances as a “de facto salary” which earned him around £30,000 a year and was unaware that what he was doing was wrong. He made clear he intends to return to the House of Lords after his suspension.

Lord Hanningfield said: “Since my release from prison and return to the House, I have had but one goal in mind, and that is to return to work and continue to serve the taxpayer, something I believe I have tried my very best to do since I became a peer in 1998.

“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.

“Nevertheless, I would like to thank my fellow peers, and members of the general public, for their ongoing support during what has been the most difficult period of my life.”

Lord Hanningfield was stripped of the Conservative whip in 2010 over his expenses claims and served nine weeks of a nine-month sentence in 2011 after being found guilty of six counts of false accounting relating to nearly £14,000 of parliamentary expenses. On that occasion, he was suspended from the Lords for nine months.

Lord Hanningfield - who is a former pig farmer Paul White, 73 - served on Essex County Council from 1970-2011 and was its Conservative leader from 2001-10. He was made a life peer as Lord Hanningfield in 1998.

Birkies and Lords (10 June 2013)

The BBC Panorama programme which exposed the disgraceful behaviour of Tory MP Patrick Mercer is being shown tonight - and I for one will be watching.

The likely outcome is that under such intense scrutiny and in response to public anger - the House of Commons will be forced to bring in a 'power of recall' so that the voters can get rid of MPs who behave badly - without having to wait until the next election comes along.

Yet that will still leave the House of Lords and all of its 'noble' peers untouched - all 831 of them even more than the 736 which existed under the last parliament.

Apparently the House of Lords costs the country around £10 billion a year to run - and that's as close to a pain-free cut in public spending as you'll ever get - so I'd start chopping straight away.  

For anyone unfamiliar with A Man's A Man - 'birkie' means a foolish posturer and 'cuif' is an old Scots word for a feckless person. 

Abolish the Gravy Train (4 June 2011)

Martin Kettle - writing in the Guardian the other day - made a strong case for abandoning plans to reform the House of Lords - and for just abolishing the second chamber altogether. Here's a summary of what Martin had to say:

"The democratic case for reform is that laws should always be passed by elected representatives and by no one else. It's an impeccable democratic position. It's the way things work done in most other democracies.

Low public esteem for all politicians, whether elected or not, means the (reform) proposal to send another 300 identikit politicians to Westminster is also a hard sell, even though it also means eventually chucking out most of the absurdly large current number of 831 mainly appointed peers.

These plans will fail. A survey by the Times this week showed that four out of five peers – and nearly half of the Lib Dems in the Lords – are opposed to Clegg's reforms. Most peers also think the Lords works perfectly well the way it is – not surprising, given that most peers are political traditionalists and placepeople who can earn a daily £300 tax free merely by crossing the threshold of the chamber.

Ministers still insist that the government will go the final mile to whip the bill through both houses and will use the Parliament Act to drive it on to the statute book. But it won't happen.

Increasingly, the real political choice on the House of Lords is between keeping it the way it is, albeit with lower numbers, and abolishing the second chamber altogether. They seem to manage with just one chamber in places as diverse as Sweden, New Zealand and the state of Nebraska. The state of Maine may be about to follow suit after a vote this week. Why not Britain? What would be so wrong with a single-chamber parliament?"

The answer to the question is - nothing, of course - because that's what we have already in the Scottish Parliament - which has no need of a second 'revising chamber'.

We should get rid of the 'gravy train' that is the House of Lords - and the 831 peers who can claim a daily £300 tax free allowance - just simply for turning up.

Don't believe the old dinosaurs like former Labour Deputy Prime Minister - John Prescott - who has gone to the Lords on a final salary, Deputy Prime Minister, pension.

Sweep these chancers all away - and the public purse will save a small fortune.

"Ye see yon birkie ca'd a lord" (7 June 2010)

Robert Burns hit the nail on the head in his famous poem - 'A Man's A Man'.

"Ye see yon birkie, ca'd a lord

What struts, and stares, an a' that

Though hundreds worship at his word

He's but a cuif for a' that"

The House of Lords is still packed to the rafters with knaves and fools - 736 of them as of April 2010 - 89 more than the 647 strong House of Commons - with more to come as the new government brings in plans to 'reform' the system.

The last Labour government had plans too - but after 13 years in power the second chamber was and remains largely unreconstructed - dominated by retired, unaccountable, second-rate politicians.

Insult is about to be added to injury as the likes of John Prescott and Michael Howard are invited to don their ermine robes.

John Prescott, former union rep, class warrior and deputy prime minister - will continue to have his nose in the public trough - along with Michael Howard, former Tory leader and Home Secretary - once famously described as 'having something of the night about him'

At a time when the public finances are in such a dreadful state - the best thing to do with the House of Lords would be to abolish it altogether.

Who needs a second chamber anyway?