PEERS GET £3,000 PAY RISE

Peers will get a £3,000-a-year 'pay rise' simply for turning up at the House of Lords. They will be paid a £200 daily flat fee for attending debates or committees under a review of their allowances. Critics warned this would allow unscrupulous members to 'clock in and clear off' without doing a full day's work, as there is no way of monitoring how long they spend in Parliament. This year, the House of Lords is sitting for 146 days. If peers turn up on all of them they could claim £29,200, compared with £26,280 under the current system, where they can claim £180-a-day to cover expenses, meals and office costs.

Lib Dem MP Norman Baker said, "This is the equivalent of turning up, passing go and collecting £200 in House of Lords monopoly. It is quite clear from both the European Commission and the House of Lords that people are clocking in and then sodding off. There needs to be root and branch reform of the House of Lords in the same way that there has been in the Commons." The independent Senior Salaries Review Body has also recommended a cut in the amount peers can claim for overnight accommodation from £174 to £140.

They will now have to provide receipts, because many are suspected of abusing the system. Bill Cockburn, Chairman of the SSRB, insisted that the new proposals would be 'cost neutral' to the taxpayer. But he accepted that more peers were likely to claim the new £200 daily fee. He said, "Our recommended overall level of financial support is broadly unchanged but the proposed conditions are more precise and transparent, requiring receipts for allowable expenditure on overnight accommodation and travel."

He added, "We also recommend that the system be subject to independent audit including a sample of individual claims. You won't find any bath plugs, you won't find any furniture or duck houses or anything of that kind. This is really concentrated on the running costs." Gordon Brown said he accepted the report's recommendations 'in full'. It is now due to be voted on by peers later this month and is expected to come into force by April. Both the Conservatives and the Lib Dems have also backed the SSRB's review, however senior figures in all parties have privately expressed surprise at the proposal to peers a flat £200-a-day attendance fee.

Lib Dem MP Norman Baker said, "I cannot believe that this will meet public demand. This is the equivalent of turning up, passing go and collecting £200 in House of Lords monopoly. It is quite clear from both the European Commission and the House of Lords, that people are clocking in and then sodding off. This doesn't solve anything. There needs to be root and branch reform of the House of Lords in the same way that there has been in the Commons."

Matthew Elliott, Chief Executive at the TaxPayers’ Alliance said, "While these recommendations are a step in the right direction, they do not go far enough to stop the abuse we have seen in the past. So many Lords perform a great deal of legislative work, and there is nothing wrong with paying them for their time, but there must be proper checks to make sure that lazy Lords are not rewarded in the same way."

However, Mr Cockburn dismissed suggestions that peers would be able to abuse the new attendance allowance. He said, "If people are swinging the lead, then you can be sure their colleagues know. What we are saying that party leaders ought to take people to task if they believe this is going on. Where it happens, it is very small beer. This is not a big problem. Most of them are really hard working and diligent." (Source: Daily Mail, Nov/09)

Peers are on course to pocket a 40% increase in their expenses as a result of efforts to ‘clean up’ the discredited system. A new £300-a-day flat-rate allowance has seen claims soar. In the first three months of the new system, peers claimed £6million, compared with £17.2million in the whole of last year. If the trend continues, the total bill this year will be more than £24million, an increase of 40%.

Last year peers argued that the new system would end the scandal around Lords expenses, which has seen two peers convicted of theft and three others suspended from Parliament. The system cut the daily amount available to individual peers by 15% but it has made many more eligible to claim expenses. Under the rules, peers simply have to show their face at Westminster to pocket the daily allowance.

No receipts are required and peers do not have to stay for debate or votes. The figures, which cover the last three months of last year, reveal that disgraced Tory peers Lord Taylor and Lord Hanningfield, both convicted of expenses fraud, continued to claim long after they had been charged. (Source: Daily Mail, Jun/11)