Peers who have claimed hundreds of thousands of pounds for homes they rarely visit will escape prosecution through a House of Lords loophole.
Keir Starmer, the Director of Public Prosecutions, denounced the change, which was made last month. It allows peers to designate as their main home a property they visit no more than once a month — a ruling Mr Starmer said caused him “very real difficulty”.Starmer said:
You could not have a looser definition. It would be nigh on impossible to find a neighbour who could act as a witness and who could say that a peer had not once stayed at a house — short of mounting 24-hour surveillance.
The Crown Prosecution Service announced yesterday that it could not bring criminal charges against Baroness Uddin, a Labour peer who received more than £100,000 in allowances by claiming that her main residence was outside London. Her family home is in Wapping, East London, where she has lived for more than a decade.
Last week, Labour Peer and donor Lord Paul revealed that there would be no prosecution in his case either.
And if that wasn't bad enough, now we get this:
THE HOUSE of Lords has used parliamentary privilege to hide the details of a ruling that caused the collapse of criminal inquiries into the expenses claims of two Labour peers.
Officials blocked the release of a secret memo outlining the reasons for the changes in expenses rules that made it impossible to prosecute Baroness Uddin and Lord Paul.
There is now a Facebook group calling for the filthy lucre to be returned here Gotty has this from Udder's wikipedia entry and the Tax Payers Alliance are considering a private prosecution in conjuction with Sir Paul Judge founder of Jury Team.
