Lord's expenses: the flight to redaction

I am back on my old hobbyhorse of lords’ expenses.

I have now talked to a committee secretary, who informs me that none of their expenses are receipted.

My contact talks of “knocking back” particularly extreme expense claims from one peer who has already been named in the matter of undue housing claims.

But the central issue is that of paperwork. There is a voluntary scheme in the Lords for peers to draw a business credit card, on which they can charge flights, meals, hotels, taxis and the rest.

I have to hand those for all the Northern Ireland peers. But they are a quite extraordinary bundle of paper, because just about every entry has been redacted.

There is absolutely no knowing what the individual commercial transaction was. At times it is obvious that it was a flight.

Peers claim that their travel arrangements are so uncertain, and their need to get to Westminster fast so urgent, that they invariably have to take the most expensive option going.

So while the rest of us are spending £35 on Easyjet or Ryanair, they go for British Midland or some such. And as for buying tickets in advance, they quite simply don’t seem to do it.

All this only goes to show that if a credit card issued to the peers, funded by the taxpayer, cannot be fully and publicly accounted for, the system isn’t worth the paper it is printed on. Added to which, all this redaction is using up a great deal of printing ink.

I go so far as to suggest that, if anything, the system of expenses in the House of Lords is potentially more dubious than in the House of Commons, specifically because of the lack of receipts.

It’s worth pointing out that there is to be no comprehensive inquiry into what’s been going on in the House of Lords, and the amounts of money involved are very much larger than in the lower house.