Will The Times be investigating Lord Rees-Mogg’s House of Lords expenses?

Today’s Times on Line has a story about Lord Bhatia’s House of Lords expenses claims.

This raises the interesting question of whether they are going to be as thorough in their investigations as the Telegraph was with it’s stories about MP’s expenses.

If so, they might like to start with one of their own columnists, William Rees-Mogg.

A previous post on this blog reported that, in the last year for which details were available at the time, Lord Rees-Mogg drew £41,463 in tax-free allowances. £8,923 of this was for ‘office costs’, part of which is quite likely to have helped to subsidise journalistic activities for The Times and other newspapers.

Bishops' attendance rates and allowances in the House of Lords

If you haven't already noticed, I take a pretty dim view of the way members of the House of Lords are selected (click on labels for 'House of Lords' postings below for more detail), not to mention the way undemocratically selected bishops and arch-bishops have the cheek to lecture the public on democracy.

A quick survey of published details about the the 23 bishops who attended the House of Lords in the year ending March 2008 shows that they put in an average of 22.4 days each.

The keenest five were the bishops of Southwark (83), Chester (46), Manchester (45) Southwell (44) and Liverpool (38).

The lowest attendances were clocked up by the bishops of Chichester (3), Truro (5), Canterbury, Arch-bishop (7) Carlisle (9) and Durham (9).

Top of the claims for daily expenses was the Bishop of Truro, with £1,124 for each of his five days in the Lords, while joint equal lowest spenders were the Arch-bishops of Canterbury (£0) and York (£0) .

As for what any of this means, I have no more idea than I have about what democratic principle entitles any of them to sit in the so-called 'upper' house of our parliament.

House of Lords expenses: Lord Rees-Mogg on gravy trains

'We must derail the grandfather of gravy trains' read a headline in the Mail on Sunday last weekend above a piece on the European Parliament by Lord Rees-Mogg – who certainly knows a thing or two about gravy trains.

Last year, he managed to clock up a grand total of £41,643 in tax-free ‘allowances’ for his 121 days attendance at the House of Lords. This included £8,923 in ‘office costs’, which raises the interesting question of how many articles he wrote for the Mail and Times in an office subsidised by taxpayers, not to mention how much they paid him for his efforts and whether or not he should now repay at least some of his takings.

Meanwhile, his ‘attendance travel costs’ for the year came to £3,036, for which his chosen ‘mode of transport’ was ‘car’, so we may be paying his congestion charge bills as well (see HERE for further details).

House of Lords expenses

Readers of earlier posts on the House of Lords will know that I’d been hoping that the story about alleged dodgy dealings by some peers might revive the debate about the absurdly undemocratic way in which members of our second chamber are selected.

As it hasn’t done so, maybe the furore about parliamentary ‘expenses’ will redirect attention along the corridor to the House of Cronies again, as the way ‘expenses’ are dished out there seems to be no less virtuous than it is in the House of Commons

The only plus side of the apparently lenient six-month suspension just handed out to Lords Truscott and Taylor is that it will at least save the taxpayer about £50,000 (as their combined allowances claim for last year came to over £100,000).

But there are still plenty of other noble noses in the trough, with questions already being asked about where the likes of Lord’s Lawson, Razzall and Rennard really do have their first and second homes. Meanwhile, I’ve just checked on the claims made by various other Lords I’ve heard of and was amazed to discover that their tax-free ‘allowances’ ranged from £25,000 to £60,000+ a year.

As I don’t have access to the manpower that the Daily Telegraph has been able to devote to exposing MP’s expenses, I now invite readers to do some research into Lords’ expenses for themselves – and, if they feel so inclined, to report back with any interesting findings.

It’s easy enough to check on who’s been claiming what because the full list for the year ending March 2008 is published and can be inspected HERE.

What news of the House of Lords scandal?

At the end of January, the media was full of stories along the lines of 'Four Lords - Snape, Taylor, Truscott and Moonie - have been accused of entering into negotiations, involving fees of up to £120,000, with a newspaper's reporters', together with various calls for further investigation by the police and parliamentary authorities.

Since then, I haven't heard anything more about it, and a quick search on Google reveals that there's hardly been a mention of it in any of the media since the end of January.

If the MSM has lost interest, I'd have thought it fertile territory for political bloggers to get their teeth into.

And, given my views on the House of Lords (HERE), I'd quite like to know what's going on.

The good news from the House of Lords

What really matters about the potential scandal brewing in the House of Lords is not that there might be some dodgy members who've been caught out sounding as though they were negotiating possible bribes, but that the story might actually get us thinking again about why such people are awarded peerages in the first place – given that not all former MPs, MEPs or Leaders of Blackburn (and other city) councils get a seat there on retirement.

The hereditary basis for sitting in the House of Lords was embarrassing enough for anyone wanting to defend or take pride in British democracy, but the ramshackle replacement is no less embarrassing. In one sense, it’s even worse, as it’s come from a premeditated and supposedly carefully thought out reform of the system, rather than from a legacy of feudalism that previous governments had never bothered to get rid of.

Worthy though most of the miscellany of retired MPs and mysteriously selected ‘great and good’ Lords may be, they are not elected by anyone, not accountable to anyone and not obliged to depart until they die. As such, there is no democratic principle I've ever heard of that would justify their playing any legislative role at all in a modern democracy.