House of Lords Screwing The Taxpayer Awards 2009
Dear readers,
My most popular post ever on this blog was last year’s expose of the MPs who had gone out of their way to screw the taxpayer over the previous Parliamentary year. Seeing as the House of Lords have been in the news recently for all the wrong reasons, I decided that now is a good time to hold the inaugural award ceremony for members of the House of Lords who have also screwed the taxpayer when it comes to taking advantage of the luxuries they receive at our expense. Which of the 753 members are you rooting for? I hope you’re sitting comfortably, here we go…
Overnight subsistence: each member who lives outside London can claim expenses to cover overnight accommodation to the tune of £174 a day - yes, every day. If they live outside London but have a second home in London, they can also claim the £174 to help ‘maintain’ their residence. The member who got the plushest hotels paid for by us is…. Baroness Bonham-Carter, who claimed £30,524 in one year just to pay for accommodation. Bet you that got her some nice hotels. TOTAL – £6,315,011
Day subsistence: each member can claim £86.50 a day - yes, a day – to cover food, taxis, tolls, the London congestion charge and even their car parking charges. It is also used to pay for their visitors’ refreshment when they come to Parliament. The greediest member in this category is…. well, actually, this award has to be shared between the 8 Lords, 2 Baronesses and 1 Viscount who all claimed £12,033. Incidentally, 174 Lords claimed more than £10,000 on this allowance alone. A special mention must go to Baroness Paisley, who only turned up to the House of Lords 20 times last year but still claimed over £1,500. TOTAL – £4,369,626
Office costs: Members can claim £75 a day for secretaries, research assistance, telephones, the internet, computers, books, periodicals and much more. To make matters worse, the Lords can claim up to £3,000 from 1st August to 31st July, even though the House of Lords isn’t sitting in that period, and they can still claim during this period even if the member doesn’t actually turn up. The member who blew the most taxpayers’ money on their office is… Earl Cathcart, who spent £15,278 on it. A special mention also goes to Lord Turnbull, who spent almost £2,000 on his office despite only turning up for 29 days during the year. TOTAL – £4,647,439
Attendance travel costs: many organisations cover travel expenses to and from work, but that doesn’t stop the House of Lords from taking it to new extremes. They get first class rail tickets and business class airfares, all paid for by you. We even pay for their Senior Citizen railcards. Their costs of travelling to and from airports is also covered. If they choose to travel by car, they get 40p a mile on expenses and they also get 20p per mile if they ride a bicycle. The member who screwed us for the most travel expenses is…. Lord Maginnis, with a whopping £17,870 just for getting to and from Parliament (£2,617 by car, £1,786 by rail and £13,467 by air). A special mention must also go to Lord Berkeley, who got £142 off the taxpayer for riding his bicycle to work. TOTAL – £1,797,037
Free postage costs: this expense has to be used for Parliamentary business but the Parliamentary envelopes and postcards clearly aren’t cheap. The member who spent the most on post is… Lord Crathorne, who racked up a bill of £616. That said, the real winner in this category was Lord Healy, who turned up for a mere 11 days last year but still managed to spend £170 of our money on postage. TOTAL – £21,682
Other perks of the job include getting a free PDA (an offer that 119 members gladly accepted, Lord Walker only attended Parliament for 16 days last year and still got one) and being lavished with six return journeys for your spouse and each of your children (rising to 15 journeys each for those appointed ministers). If you add these nuggets to the expenses listed above and chuck in the Ministerial allowances that some members get as well, the total amount spent on the House of Lords last year was over £17.2 million.
Of course, if we knew that every single member of the House of Lords was spending all their time doing their duty to Parliament and the United Kingdom by working extremely hard, some of this might seem quite reasonable. Sadly this is not the case, particularly for the 59 Lords, Baronesses, Earls, Dukes and Marquesses who didn’t turn up once, not once in the entire Parliamentary year (although this minor technical glitch didn’t stop either Baroness Nicol or Lord Kilpatrick from claiming over £2,500 each in office expenses). Even Lord Beaumont turned up 104 times and he died in May last year. On that note, 29 members of the House of Lords died during the last Parliamentary year, which represented 4% of all members. Strange, but true.
So, there you have it. The House of Lords might not get the same degree of publicity or fame as the House of Commons, but that doesn’t stop the moral, decent and entirely ethical members of the House of Lords from making their lives as comfortable as possible at the taxpayers’ expense. I hope you’re happy with what you’ve read because that is the system we’ve got and that is where your taxes are going. Maybe these highly esteemed members of the political class will see sense and start a campaign to curb their excesses in these dark economic times. Then again, maybe they won’t.
Regards
A.Tory
” I hope you’re happy with what you’ve read because that is the system we’ve got and that is where your taxes are going.”
And not content with that, Hazel Blears (*spit*) plans to allow councillors to dig in at the trough as well:
“Labour is to give local councillors the right to claim their town hall pay even if they never turn up to a meeting.”
And check out the paragraph at the end of that report – they want to provide them with redundancy payments when they get kicked out by the voters!
I’m going to need a new keyboard now. And monitor. And maybe a desk, if I bang my head on the current one just a little harder….
Yikes, didn’t hear about that one. Excellent spot.
I know an ex-Councillor (a Tory) who vehemently resents any and all corruption enquiries, whether it’s cash-for-questions, Sleazey Levy, mortgaged Mandy or Nannygate. He broadly takes the view that those elected *are allowed* to enrich themselves as if not, why would they bother to get involved and what’s wrong with it anyway? Needless to say, we argue a lot over this because I personally think that it’s just our politicical class attemting to accrue privillege for itself at our expense while bigging up its own importance by making this none of the electorates business.
It’s amazing to think that any member of the House of Lords could even begin to defend what they receive at our expense, but I’m sure there are a few charming souls who would declare their ‘right’ to such extravagance.
The Lords is the best pension in town. I couldn’t afford to buy a pension that: gives me £175 a day
for sitting in the daycare common roomturning up, another £70-odd to spend on food with subsidised eateries and bars provided onsite and round-the-clock medical provision in case you have a fall or old-age gets to you. It’s a pension and a retirement home all in one and frankly anyone who *doesn’t* want some of that is missing a trick!The Lords can claim these sums for simply turning up and falling asleep.
The quality of their work, their commitment to Parliament and their desire to work on behalf of the British public are not relevant in the slightest, judging by the attendance records.
The Lords can claim these sums for simply turning up and falling asleep.
I think you’ll find that my intellect is such that, even when asleep, I’m worth a lot more than £175 a day.
Anyway, I need to get a decent return on the cash I had to give Tony to get into the House in the first place.
I have been making a nuisance of myself, being incompetent, coming up with half-baked schemes and generally being a bore on some old subject that no one cares about, like The Belgrano or the National Helium reserve fund.
Being a crass dunderhead, but not a rebel, allows for when a bright young thing comes along to take my safe seat,for an Illinois sized fee of course, I can ask for elevation to the Lords. No questions asked, it will be granted for a mixture of long service, loyalty, gratitude and getting the old duffer out of the way.
I shall enjoy carrying on my good work and sitting with old chums again. Even some of the new ones, like Lord Patently or Lord Asda, aren’t too bad once they’ve mastered the correct spoon for Gazpacho.
Lord Patently, I understand your desire to get a decent return on your investment. Have a chat with Lord Mandelson – he can point you in the right direction.
Bill, I’m sure that your elevation will come in due course, such is your excellent track record. If not, go along with Lord Patently to have a chat with Lord Mandelson.
Hmmm. Good idea, but one does have to be careful when accepting advice as to matters of orientation from that particular Qu.. err I mean Peer.
Yet the likes of James Workhouse Purnell would rather vilify poor people who have fallen on hard times than the real Labour client state… worthless idiots they’ve “ennobled”, PFI beneficiaries, quangocrats, & anyone else on their payroll.
This reinforces my belief that the main problem isn’t the outright fraudsters, it’s what people are legally allowed to get away with, connived at by a government drunkenly spending our money.
Sickening inversion of values from the party which once claimed to represent the working man.
PS- I’ve been a bit thin on the ground lately, I genuinely can’t think of anything to say most of the time!
I’d take mortgage orientation advice from Peter at pretty much any point as he clearly knows how to get a canny deal!
Asquith, it’s quality not quantity of comments that I appreciate! (although people like Shaun, Patently, Julia, Bill and several others manage to combine the two)
Lord Mandelson of Haribot and Hartlepool is certainly good at striking a deal – you just have to pray that you’re on the right side of it.
just have to pray that you’re on the right side of it
Well obviously I’m not as he’s in government getting rich and I’m not in government while they pick my pocket. He’s got another sweet deal but now they are doing it at the expense of future generations. Which probably bothers me, as a non-breeder, less than him (also a non-breeder) but still, it can’t be right!
This reinforces my belief that the main problem isn’t the outright fraudsters, it’s what people are legally allowed to get away with
Very, very good point, and one that can only be raised if there is a proper degree of openness about the whole subject. We need MPs’ and Lords’ expenses to be published, in full, so that we can see what is their total remuneration. Only then can the subject be discussed sensibly.
you do all realise that when I get my peerage for ‘Services to Hypocrisy’, I’ll be arguing the other way? Less accountability! more slush funds! More free cash!!!
[...] Letters From a Tory we have this alarming bit of information on how the Lords and Ladies of the realm are fleecing us [...]
[...] Tory presents the House of Lords Screwing The Taxpayer Awards 2009. Just as a taster, the coveted Overnight Subsistence Award is won this year by Baroness [...]
[...] representatives or not – the problem here is indicative of a wider problem with our MPs, MEPs and Peers of the Realm. They are simply the wrong type of person to do the job. MPs enter Parliament these days as [...]