Peer let off despite 'doubts' about her expenses

A Labour peer who claimed £250,000 in parliamentary expenses on a flat she visited only occasionally was spared punishment after quietly repaying £5,000.





Baroness Goudie claimed overnight expenses on the £1.5 million mews house in Belgravia, central London, that she shared with her barrister husband, James Photo: UPPA/JULIAN SIMMONDS

7:30AM GMT 27 Jan 2011

Baroness Goudie, a friend of Gordon and Sarah Brown, admitted that she did not spend the majority of her time at the £200,000 flat in Glasgow, despite designating it as her main home for the purposes of her House of Lords allowances.
This enabled her to claim overnight expenses on the £1.5 million mews house in Belgravia, central London, she shared with her barrister husband, James.
Lady Goudie, who grew up in the capital and raised a family there, also admitted that she usually spent parliamentary recesses at a holiday home in Cape Cod, Massachusetts.
Following a year-long investigation, the Clerk of the Parliaments, Michael Pownall, said he had “doubts” about the designation of the flat as a main residence. But no further action was taken after Lady Goudie apologised in writing.
She also repaid £5,130.50 voluntarily which she had claimed for a three-month period when she had not visited the Glasgow flat at all because of ill-health.
In total, Lady Goudie claimed about £168,000 in overnight expenses and £82,000 for travel to and from the property over a nine-year period.
Three months ago, she sold the flat for a profit of £50,000, and now designates her London address as her main home.
Lady Goudie’s apology and the report into her claims was slipped out quietly on the parliamentary website before Christmas. The disclosure follows the conviction this week of Lord Taylor of Warwick for claiming £11,000 on a house in which he had never stayed overnight.
Investigations into nine peers with questionable designations were dropped after Mr Pownall, who is responsible for policing the system, ruled that it was sufficient for a peer to stay for just one night a month at a property for it to be their main home. The Clerk accepted that Lady Goudie had “extensive Scottish connections, familial, business and voluntary”.
Contacted by The Daily Telegraph, Lady Goudie said: “I haven’t done anything wrong. I was sick, I had a hip operation [so] I wasn’t able to travel.”

She should have used the money to get rid of all thiose chins she has

I think she should have been truthful about where she was living and not "bend the rules" to fit her circumstances.

Given that she has used the excuse of being "medically unfit to travel" to illegally claim for expenses, which she has admitted to by repaying some of the money claimed, enabled her to defraud the public purse and avoid prosecution simply by apologising.

It may be as well to remember that this is an example which others can follow.

ETA I agree about the chins!

fred wrote:She should have used the money to get rid of all thiose chins she has

She did fred, you should have seen the chins before the money she stole ran out.

Where is the justice in the sentences handed out by the courts to smooth talking lying fraudsters who are little more than looters that have abused their position of trust to rob the nation of vast sums of money over a period of many years? But, who knows they are probably drinking buddies or members of the same Masonic chapel.