From the BBC:
Ex-Tory peer Lord Taylor of Warwick has been jailed for 12 months for falsely claiming £11,277 in parliamentary expenses.
The 58-year-old claimed travel costs between his Oxford home and Westminster, as well as subsistence for staying in London.
He said he had made the false claims “in lieu of a salary”, and had been acting on the advice of colleagues.
Lord Taylor pleaded not guilty to the charges, but was convicted in January.
Read the full story at the BBC News website.
5 Comments
I feel conned by him (more so than by the other bent Lords and MPs who fiddled their allowances). I remember feeling sorry for the guy when he failed to win the Cheltenham (?) seat with quite a swing against the Tories, much of which was almost certainly due to racism. He behaved with such dignity in defeat. He’s not showing much dignity these days.
“Taylor, who was Britain’s first black Conservative peer and a former barrister and radio and TV presenter, listed his main residence as a home in Oxford, which was owned by his nephew, while he actually lived in a flat in Ealing, west London.”
I must admit I find it difficult to grasp the essential difference between this case and that of Lord Falkland, who listed as his main residence a property near Maidstone, which was owned by his wife’s aunt, while he actually lived in a house in Clapham, South London.
@Dave M
As someone who campaigned for Nigel Jones in Cheltenham in 1992 I can assure you that the result had very little to do with racism.
I shan’t go into all the reasons why we won the seat and the Tories lost but the swing from the Tories was similar to that in Bath (not unlike Cheltenham demographically) which was also gained from the Tories by Don Foster.
We also won North Cornwall and North Devon with similar swings.
Of course I can see that there’s a difference in degree. Lord Taylor claimed more than £11,000, whereas Lord Falkland claimed an estimated £200,000.
Wonder what he did to get singled out of the dozens and dozens of comparable MPs?