Met drops Lord Paul expenses investigation

Lord Paul has disclosed that he’s had a letter from the Metropolitan Police saying that they have dropped their investigation into his expenses.

The allegation was that he had claimed tens of thousands of pounds for overnight stays at a one-bedroom flat in an Oxfordshire hotel citing it as his main home.

Other peers may receive similar letters from the Specialist Crime Unit at the Met. 

A big obstacle to the Met pursuing its inquiries would appear to be the decision by the Lords’ own committee, meeting in February, ruling that a peer’s main home could be somewhere the peer visited as little as once a month.

That ruling allowed the Lords to drop nine internal investigations into allegations of expenses abuse. It now appears to be having a similar (presumably not entirely unexpected) effect on the police investigations.

UPDATE: But Lord Paul’s not entirely out of the woods. The Clerk of the Parliaments, when he heard about the police closing their investigation, referred Lord Paul (as he did Lord Clarke of Hampstead when the police dropped their investigation into him) to the Lords Privileges Committee, chaired by Baroness Manningham-Buller, former head of MI5.

This is the committee which investigated the Sunday Times’ very different allegations over lobbying and imposed apologies and suspensions on some peers over that.
 
If you fancy overseeing all this in the future, the Lords have just advertised for a Commissioner for Standards. You can see the ad here, just under the kitchen porter job.