Saturday, May 16, 2009

Lord Ryder and Baroness Uddin

Unwilling to let the Telegraph have all the fun, the Sunday Times has been investigating the affairs of a couple of members of the upper house.

There's Lord Ryder:

A former acting chairman of the BBC has claimed more than £100,000 in expenses from the House of Lords by saying that a converted stable on his parents’ country estate is his main home.

Lord Ryder was given the money to cover the cost of staying overnight in London as he claimed he was living away from his “main residence” in Suffolk.

However, inquiries by The Sunday Times have found that Ryder mostly lives in his £2m family home in central London, a mile from the Lords. His mother says he is only an occasional visitor to the estate.

And then there's Baroness Uddin:

A Labour baroness who lives in low-cost social housing has a palatial family holiday mansion overseas.

Baroness Uddin lives in a three-bedroom house in Wapping, east London, which is heavily subsidised because it is intended for people who cannot afford to buy property in the area.

However, for almost a decade her husband Komar has also owned the mansion in Bangladesh, which is decorated with Italian marble and bears a crest similar to that of the House of Lords on its gates.

2 comments:

Paul Walter said...

Ryder? Good friend of the Thatch and No 13 resident I seem to remember....

Jock Coats said...

Indeed, Richard Ryder, former Chief Whip (under Major mostly in that particular post).

With the Lords, I have to say that I would not be so forgiving as some appear to be with MPs.

Whilst an MP is put there by his or her constituency electorate and it ought to be as much their right to boot them out as anyone's, with peers there is no such nicety.

As appointees I think if they are proven to have done something to bring their office or the house into disrepute, there should be no second chance. There are plenty of people who could be appointed in their stead.

These two Labour peers in the cash for amendments business for example, and Ahmed, and Archer and anyone shown to have been profiteering rather than claiming legitimate expenses ought to simply be given a permanent Leave of Absence if we don't want to go to the trouble of attainting them.