Expenses: a good week to bury bad news?

It was a very good week to bury bad news. What better time to try to draw the veil over the tawdry expenses scandal in the House of Lords?

Welfare cuts on an unprecedented scale, defence cuts, local authority cuts, and more – all announced on Wednesday, leaving shell-shocked reaction for Thursday. Hey presto! That was the day the Lords chose to bury their expenses misdoing.

The headlines identified the three Peers who had been suspended from the house for sums that ranged between £27,000 and £125,000. It was left to Lord Waheed Alli to question how, out of the dozens of suspects in the “second homes” scandal, only three Asian peers were being singled out.

At the root of the scandal was the way in which peers identified their second homes as their primary residences and then charged overnight allowances and travel expenses to and from those addresses whilst continuing to live in their London homes. The taxpayer footed the bill. The best scrutiny of al this was executed by the Sunday Times.

Unlike the “other place”, no receipts were ever required and as a result, even with the three suspended peers, the police had no evidence upon which they could prosecute.

In the Sunday Times cascade of Lords and Ladies who made a killing out of all this is the Lords Speaker, Lady Hayman. The paper (Sept 6th 2009) identified Hayman as having claimed £200,000 in allowances after claiming her home in Norfolk as her main address.

Lady Hayman broke no rules. She breaks none now. The Lords Committee of which she is a member recommended new rules that suggest members should stay a minimum of one night a month in their primary residence for it to qualify as a primary residence – twelve days a year.

The question remains, how come if the three suspended peers are not to be prosecuted, that none of the other members who made all that un-receipted money out of the taxpayer, are at the very least to be suspended with them? Or would that leave their Lordships’ House inquorate?