Campaigners demand ‘real consequences’ for peer who claimed expenses for car journeys he did not take
Campaigners have criticised as too lenient the punishment handed to a Conservative hereditary peer who has been found to have broken the House of Lords rules for the second time.
In a report published on Wednesday, the House of Lords concluded that the Earl of Shrewsbury had fiddled his expenses and that he had done so in an “unacceptably casual” way. The lords’ authorities are intending to suspend him from the upper chamber for two weeks.
His misconduct occurred just three months after returning to the Lords from a nine-month suspension for lobbying for a commercial company that he was working for. It was one of the biggest punishments ever imposed on a peer.
Campaigners at Spotlight on Corruption said his conduct showed “a deeply worrying disregard for the rules” and that there needed to be real consequences for those who repeatedly offend.
