As the BBC says:
A leading Tory donor has been publicly rebuked by the Lords appointments commission for taking his seat without giving up his status as a tax exile … The commission said it had informed the prime minister of Lord Laidlaw’s situation and said it would not have approved his peerage if it had known that he would not honour his promise.
In other words – he promised to pay tax if he got his peerage, he’s got his peerage and, er… he’s not paying the tax he promised.
And here’s a fun twist for those who have been following the attempts of Conservative and Labour MPs to exempt Parliament from the Freedom of Information Act – it’s under that very act that the rest of us get to read the following letter written to Lord Laidlaw by the Chairman of the Appointments Commission:
You made a very precise commitment to the commission in a situation where you knew a condition of being appointed to the Lords was to be UK tax resident. You have so far failed to honour this unqualified commitment.
And the reason Lord Laidlaw hasn’t had the Conservative whip withdrawn for breaking his promise and failing to pay the tax is …?
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…mind you, if he holds to his other promise of donating most of his fortune (£700m+) to good causes over the next decade he’ll probably do more good than funding beurocrats in Whitehall! But his promises might be worth very little at the moment I guess!
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[...] 2009 by . The Conservative peer Lord Laidlaw was criticised by the Lords Appointments Commission last year for failing to keep his promise to stop being a tax exile if he was appointed to the House of Lords: [...]