Baroness Hayman, the Lord Speaker who is in charge of the House of Lords expenses reform it has been reported in the Times at the weekend that she has claimed £200,000  by designating her home in Norfolk as her main address

She receives £38,000 a year to help with the cost of accommodation in London, on top of her £108,000-a-year salary. Before she became Speaker, she claimed £18,000 a year in tax-free overnight allowances. Earlier this summer, the House Committee, which is chaired by Hayman, requested that the Senior Salaries Review Body (SSRB) conduct a review of financial support for peers.

Its initial consultation paper said: “The current overnight allowance system might be regarded as creating an incentive for members to designate a non-London property as their main home so they can claim overnight subsistence … when attending the House.”

Baroness Hayman and her husband have continued to live in the London home after buying a former vicarage in a village near Thetford, Norfolk, for £405,000 in 1997. The property, which has a pool and tennis court, was initially the family’s second home. They had previously had a shared cottage in Norfolk.

After leaving her ministerial job in 2001 (she was previosuly an MP), Hayman designated the Norfolk property as her main home. She was then able to claim £18,000 a year tax-free for the cost of a maintaining the London home while attending parliament.

She continued to work for various London-based organisations, including Cancer Research UK, the Human Tissue Authority and the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew. Her husband also chaired a charity based in the capital and became a director of a City company. She said these activities did not require residence in London.

On her appointment as Lord Speaker three years ago, the baroness became eligible to claim night subsistence allowance for public office holders whose main home is outside London. The sum, which has since risen from £34,000 to £38,000, is taxed.

It was quoted in the Times that, Hayman wrote in an e-mail that she had been “a long-standing advocate of a root-and-branch external review of the financial support systems available for members of the House of Lords”.

She continued: “After my husband’s retirement, I left ministerial office and we made our Norfolk home our principal residence and it remains so today … We also made the decision to retain the house that we already owned in London in order to enable me to participate fully in the work of the House of Lords.”

Hayman said this was “the precise purpose of the overnight allowance scheme”.

She said the claims were justified even though she had no mortgage. “At the risk of stating the obvious, a mortgage is not the only expense involved in maintaining a house in London,” she wrote.

She added: “As the House sits for the majority of the working days in the year, we have both continued to use the London residence as an address for correspondence.”

Her expenses claims raise questions, however, about why taxpayers should pay London accommodation allowance to someone who has owned a home in the city for more than 30 years.  Particularly from someone who is supposed to be in charge of the reform of Lords expenses.  Therefore the Sunlight Centre for Open Politics will firstly be writing to Baroness Hayman for an explanation.

Below is the letter the Sunlight Centre has sent to the Baroness Hayman:

 

Baroness Hayman Letter

Published on September 7th, 2009 by chris