One of the peers is Baroness Uddin, who claimed her main residence was a property in Maidstone that is alleged to have been “barely occupied”. “Police and criminal lawyers are confident that charges will be brought. “

So it appears that the lack of any definition in the rules of a peer’s main residence – which was the reason for the recent complaint against Lord Rennard not being upheld – is not seen as an impediment in bringing a criminal prosecution.

But no.

Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg has called for the Queen’s Speech to be cancelled and replaced with emergency reforms to “clean up politics”. … Mr Clegg said he wanted Parliament to quickly adopt new powers to sack corrupt MPs and to abolish hereditary peers.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8361715.stm

But maybe he had the abolition of a particular hereditary peer in mind?

Well, at least you no longer seem to be claiming that Viscount Falkland doesn’t take the Lib Dem whip, or that the whip couldn’t be withdrawn from him.

So what exactly are you trying to say? That the party’s power over peers is more limited than its power over MPs, because peers aren’t reliant on party support for re-election? I think we’re all well aware of that. But it doesn’t mean that the party can’t express its disapproval of what the man has done, in any number of ways.

That the party has done absolutely nothing to express its disapproval is a matter of choice, not of inability.

If you think the Lords whip’s office has some power that I’ve missed, by all means, indicate the relevant legislation. Everything I can find indicates that Falkland answers only to the House as a whole.

But of course I never suggested the party had the power to remove Viscount Falkland from the House of Lords. What I said was that if the party did feel it wanted to express some kind of disapproval of the actions of this Liberal Democrat parliamentarian, who has defrauded the public purse of more than £140,000 by lying about where he lives, there were a number of ways in which it could do so.

And wherever do you get the bizarre idea that Viscount Falkland doesn’t take the Lib Dem whip in the Lords? Did you not even read the small extract from the article quoted above, which made it clear that it was the Lib Dem whips’ office which made him stop claiming the money? (Mind you, reading what you’ve written, I’m doubtful whether you even understand what “taking the whip” means.)

And why on earth do you think the party would have to refund this impoverished aristocrat’s donations, if it expelled him? Where refunding donations from crooks is concerned, the words “Michael” and “Brown” spring immediately to mind!

Remove the whip? (Can you even do that to Lords?)

Not when they don’t have it. Note that Falkland’s seat in the Lords has got nothing to do with the Lib Dems, he just happens to support the party. He will also never stand for election again – as I understand it he holds that seat until removed (by death or abolition of hereditary peers) – so the loss of party campaigning support would be irrelevant.

There are all kinds of options, ranging from a public reprimand to withdrawal of the whip and expulsion from the party.

Reprimand away – that’s hardly “sacked”. In this case, “expulsion from the party” is just a pretty term for “return his donations”. I’m not sure why you would punish somebody for their expenses claims by giving them more money. It would not take away his seat in the Lords or his ability to claim further expenses.

There are all kinds of options if you just want to make an empty gesture. Actually sacking him? I don’t see how. It’s vaguely disturbing that the House of Lords Act left us with so little control over the remaining seated hereditary peers, but the whole thing was a hasty compromise that nobody expected to be around long enough to matter. It does have curious parallels to the call for there to be a way to “sack your MP”.

Simply tell the next person who rings that you are not Jo and that Jo has died. Equally return all post marked “return to sender – deceased”. It is the most effective way of getting off lists I know.

Tim

Yes – I did email that address but got a snidey letter a week later from a local defining all the different ways you can cancel your membership, like being expelled, having it rescinded etc, as if I was a GCSE educated chav…

Will try again though…

Of course the party could do something, if it wanted to. There are all kinds of options, ranging from a public reprimand to withdrawal of the whip and expulsion from the party.

But based on past form the party will just try to pretend it hasn’t happened.

If there’s anything that can be done to him by the party, I don’t see it.

If only. A public reprimand of any kind from the party would at least be something – as opposed to what’s happened so far, which apparently amounts to “Stop the fraudulent claims and no more will be said”.

I think there’s enough information in the public domain to show that if “prosecution” ws the result of this type of fraud, quite a number of peers would already be in the dock. The problem is that in Rennard’s case we have an official ruling that there is no definition of “main residence”. So, basically, anything goes.

Absolutely disgraceful.

Er, pretty close contest, I’d have guessed!

I’m still a liberal and so I’m still mainly a Lib Dem voter, so I still take an interest in what the Lib Dems are doing. I do that in part by participating in the public section of Lib Dem Voice. If you want a members-only experience you should probably be reading the members-only forum, no?