Peer facing jail over £14,000 fraud after final expenses trial

A peer is facing jail after being found guilty of fraudulently claiming nearly £14,000 in the final parliamentary expenses trial.

Former Tory frontbencher Lord Hanningfield, 70, joins four ex-MPs and a fellow member of the Lords already convicted of dishonestly obtaining thousands of pounds from the taxpayer by making false claims for allowances.

The jury of nine women and three men took just four hours to find him guilty of six counts of false accounting after an eight-day trial at Chelmsford Crown Court.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

After their verdicts were announced it was also revealed Lord Sugar was forced to remove a Twitter message speculating during one of the parliamentary expenses trials that a peer would be cleared because he was a Tory.

Judge Mr Justice Saunders ordered the multi-millionaire Apprentice business guru to take down the posting on the popular website, fearing it could unfairly influence jurors.

He also referred the matter to Attorney General Dominic Grieve, who has the power to bring charges against people who harm the process of justice, but he decided not to take any action.

As he allowed the media to report what happened for the first time, he also questioned whether the Attorney General could take action to minimise the risk to trials from celebrity Tweets in the future.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

Lord Hanningfield, an ex-Lords opposition frontbencher and leader of Essex County Council, claimed £13,379 in parliamentary expenses for overnight stays in London when he was not in the capital.

This included one occasion in February 2008 when he was actually on board a flight to India.

The peer, a former pig farmer from West Hanningfield, near Chelmsford, also fraudulently claimed £382 in train fares and £147 in mileage by doubling the seven-mile distance from his house to the train station.

He continues to protest his innocence and is considering an appeal, telling reporters as he left court: “I’m devastated but I have no regrets. I did nothing wrong.”

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

Lord Hanningfield told the jury that he treated the Lords expenses for staying overnight in London as an allowance for living outside the capital and spent just “a minute a month” completing his claim forms.

He alleged that most other peers treated the House of Lords as a “club”, turning up there for only 10 minutes to claim their daily allowance.

The disgraced peer insisted his parliamentary duties left him thousands of pounds out of pocket and said he “averaged out” his claims to recoup some of the money he spent.

When questioned by detectives, he told them to look at the records of other peers and claimed he was not the only one claiming expenses in this way.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

Unmarried Lord Hanningfield, who is suffering from ill health, told the court that public service was his life and he worked very long hours on Lords and county council business.

He said he re-mortgaged his bungalow to fight the case and was living on a modest pension because he “never got round to signing the forms” for the local government pension to which he was entitled.

But Stephen O’Doherty, reviewing lawyer for the Crown Prosecution Service, said: “The defence of Lord Hanningfield was that he was not paid a salary and that justified him claiming for expenses that he had never incurred.

“This was in our view completely unacceptable and clearly the jury agreed.”

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

Former Labour MP David Chaytor, who lives in Todmorden, was released from Spring Hill open prison, Buckinghamshire, yesterday under the home detention curfew scheme after serving a quarter of his 18 month sentence.

The judge also criticised Prime Minister David Cameron, Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg and former Prime Minister Gordon Brown for joining a “pre-election frenzy” over the expense cheat MPs that nearly scuppered their trials.