BRITAIN’S House of Lords handed three of its members lengthy suspensions today for wrongly claiming thousands of pounds in parliamentary expenses.
Peers voted unanimously to approve the sanctions against Bangladeshi-born Manzila Pola Uddin, the first Muslim woman to enter the Lords, Indian business magnate Swaraj Paul, and businessman Amir Bhatia.
Baroness Uddin, a one-time member of the opposition Labour party, was suspended until the end of the parliamentary session in early 2012 and told to repay £125,349.10 ($200,000).
Lord Bhatia, an independent peer, was suspended for eight months and has already repaid more than £27,000 ($42,509) in wrongly claimed expenses.
And Lord Paul, another one-time member of the Labour party and one of Britain’s wealthiest men, was suspended for four months and has already returned £41,982 ($66,110).
The sanctions, ordered by the House of Lords Privileges and Conduct Committee, are the toughest imposed on misbehaving members for 300 years.
During a debate in the House ahead of the vote, prominent Labour peer Lord Waheed Alli raised concerns about a possible racial bias.
“It cannot have escaped your attention that the only three members of the House who were referred to the Committee for Privileges and Conduct and subsequently investigated under these procedures were all Asian,” he said.
However, the chairman of the conduct committee, Lord Ivon Anthony Moore-Brabazon, rejected this, saying: “It wasn’t because the three peers were Asians in the least bit.”
Uddin and Bhatia were found by the committee to have acted “not in good faith” by designating residences as their main homes in order to benefit from generous overnight expenses allowances.
Paul meanwhile was found to have been “utterly unreasonable” and “negligent” in the way he designated his homes under the expenses system.
Questions were raised about their claims following newspaper allegations published last year.
A similar expose of elected lawmakers’ expenses earlier in 2009 caused a major political scandal and prompted an overhaul of the system, while a number of lawmakers face criminal charges over their claims.
A Labour spokesman said Paul had resigned his membership of the party, while Uddin had been suspended amid moves to expel her.
