“The past leaves its infections,
We convalesce and yet
Some make love to remember
Some make love to forget...”
From Elegiac Trash
by Bachchoo

Last year a newspaper, the Daily Telegraph, got hold of documents detailing the expenses claims that members of the British Parliament had filed. The claims had been processed and the money paid out to members of Parliament (MPs) from the public purse. One of the things that the MPs and members of the upper chamber, the House of Lords, could legitimately claim for were their “second homes” as most of them had constituencies outside London and needed to live in London to attend Parliament. Fair enough.
The expenses for the rent of a room or a small flat in London would be deemed, by any standards, the appropriate expense for an MP whose constituency was in Glasgow. The principle was, not unreasonably, stretched to include some of the expenses incurred by living in such accommodation — getting a bed to sleep on if it was unfurnished, etc.
However, the Telegraph’s revelations, painfully eked out day after day with different MPs targeted, caused a very deep dent in the prestige of parliament. The revelations demonstrated that very many MPs were very willing to twist, extend and interpret the rules to make a fast buck, sometimes even a very trivial and small one.
There were ridiculous items — someone charging for chewing gum or a packet of biscuits and then there were very dubious ones with one grandee having a moat around his country estate repaired at huge public cost. The female home secretary of the time charged the public purse for pornographic films that her husband had hired while living in her constituency in what she designated as her “second home”.
The main device for cheating was something known as “swapping”. If an MP had an expensive home somewhere in the country, in or around their constituency perhaps, they would designate that as their second home and say that their “primarily home” was in London, despite the fact that this was a room rented from their sister, boyfriend or even their daughter.
This enabled the cheats to claim the full mortgage on the homes where they lived with their families. Some charged for mortgages which had long been paid off.
The Telegraph’s revelations caused the biggest parliamentary scandal of the decade or perhaps since the Sixties when ministers shared the favours of prostitutes with Russian spies. The scandal spread through all parties and from revelations about Commons moved to revelations about Lords.
This week the House of Lords Privileges and Conduct Committee has, after a lengthy inquiry, submitted a report to the House condemning three peers for wrongfully claiming tens of thousands of pounds in expenses.
The judgment recommends punishments and that the three repay £200,000 to the exchequer in reparation. The three peers are: Lord Paul (Swaraj Pal as he was known to Indians), Lord Bhatia and Baroness Uddin.
Read those names again — no Dalhousie, no Canning, no Curzon, no Linlithgow — Paul, Bhatia and Uddin.
(The latter’s title and assumption of the name Baroness Uddin is somewhat puzzling as surely “Uddin” simply means “of the faith” and isn’t really her name — but Kher!)
The leader of the House of Lords, Lord Strathclyde, has said he is shocked and appalled by the cases and has promised that the “penalties would be the strongest handed out by the House of Lords”. The three must be thanking Ishwar and Allah that the days of The Tower and Jacobite justice are long gone. Today’s severe penalties will mean that Lady Uddin will be suspended from the Upper Chamber till 2012 and will have to return £125,349 to the public purse. Lord Bhatia faces being suspended for eight months and has already repaid £27,000.
Lord Paul’s case is somewhat different as the committee accepted that rather than acting dishonestly he had been negligent and allowed these claims to be forwarded on his behalf. He has already paid back £41,982 which his office erroneously claimed. It is known that he runs businesses, contributes to charities and can very plausibly plead that his busy schedule caused the claims to slip his attention.
Ever since the late ’50s, ’60s and ’70s and the settlement of South Asians, Caribbean and African people from the former colonies in Britain there has been a movement, sometimes vociferous and militant, to advance the cause of immigrants.
Though there has never been a concerted or effective national policy specifically aimed at integrating this immigrant community, there have been various social and governmental initiatives towards fairness and the genesis of “multiculturalism”.
One such move was the attempt to recruit “ethnic” people to positions of some significance in the political parties. Members of the ethnic communities were, in this concessional mode and to demonstrate that there was no conscious or sub-conscious apartheid in British society, given titles and peerages. These were, to be fair, handed out on the same basis as they would be for the native population — prosperity in business and donations to a political party could and did bring a peerage. Distinction in the arts — Sir V.S. Naipaul and Sir Salman Rushdie — could fetch a knighthood. Charitable works and public service could also be used as criteria to make up the numbers.
Deserving as the individuals might be, they were always deemed to be “role models” whose status and achievements their communities could look up to. (My personal feeling is that the role model theory is a bit flawed. However distinguished she is, I would give my left arm not to look or be like Baroness Uddin.)
This representative function makes it somewhat shameful that the only three peers picked out for criticism are of ethnic stock. So far no one has cried “racism” but my experience of ambulance chasers in this country tells me that someone will. On evidence the Lords Privileges Committee has been just and judicious. So why out of hundreds of peers have these three behaved in this particular way? Are they carrying into British institutions the tradition of corruption associated with subcontinental politics? Do they feel a peerage, like some Maharaja’s title, puts them beyond normal legal scrutiny?
An examination of the behaviour of politicians from the ethnic communities in local councils, for example in Tower Hamlets where the Bangladeshi settlers elect Bangladeshi councillors, would suggest exactly that. But that’s another, more woeful story.