We all know that the attorney-general is facing questions about the employment of her overstaying housekeeper who she sacked on Wednesday last week and we subsequently reported to the UKBA as an employer of an overstayer/illegal immigrant.  However there were further developements in the Times yesterday, it has come to light that for years she has been claiming an allowance intended for peers who live outside London despite saying her main home is in London.

The Baroness has a £2 million pound home in Chiswick, West London, and has declared this on her Lords expenses form as her main residence since 2001.  Yet she recieves an allowance of £38,280 a year, on top of her £113,000 salary as the Attorney General – the Chief Law Officer for England and Wales.  She has a cottage in Oxfordshire and as she declared her home in Chiswick as her main home since 2001 and with her work as Attorney General this is primia facie evidence that she should not be claiming extra money for her Chiswick home.

The Senior Salaries Review Body say that ministers whose main home is outside London should only claim the extra allowance.  A parliamentary fact sheet on ministers’ pay makes clear that ministers in the Lords can claim the higher fee for night subsistence only if their main home is not in London.  This means that the Baroness, who was at the Home Office before becoming attorney-general, may have been wrongly paid up to £170,000 since 2004. Instead, she should have been paid only a London supplement, which would have amounted to less than £10,000 in the same five-year period.

We await to see how the week progresses as the housekeeper’s flat was raided at the weekend by the UKBA according to media sources and numerous documents were taken away for further investigation.  We also await the outcome of further investigations into Baroness Scotland’s expenses but as the Chief Law Officer for England and Wales we consider her to beyond reproach.

Published on September 21st, 2009 by chris