Gordon Brown's millionaire and £38,000 expenses

Published 11th Oct 2009

A multi-millionaire ally of Gordon Brown pretended that a small flat occupied by one of his employees was his main home so he could claim £38,000 in expenses from the Lords.

Lord Paul, one of Labour’s biggest donors and a friend of the prime minister, has admitted he never even slept in the flat, despite stating it was his main residence.

The one-bedroom flat was occupied by a manager from one of Paul’s hotels who confirmed last week that the peer had never lived there while claiming the expenses.

Paul, who has a family fortune of £500m, was actually based in London, where he has lived for more than 40 years.

By saying his main home was his manager’s flat in Oxfordshire, he was able to claim cash allowances which are available only to peers who live outside the capital.

Last week Paul argued that he had been entitled to claim the flat was his home as it was “available” for his use. He said he could have moved the manager out for the night if he stayed there, but he never did so. “I don’t say that I stayed the night — I said that it was available to me,” he said.

Yesterday Angus Robertson, the Scottish National leader in Westminster, said he would write to the police and the Lords authorities requesting an investigation. “It is outrageous to claim somewhere is your main home if you have never slept there,” he said.

It comes as more than 100 MPs are to be asked questions about their expenses by an auditor appointed by the Commons. There has been no audit in the Lords despite a series of disclosures in The Sunday Times that have led to police inquiries into three peers.

Paul, 78, a deputy speaker of the Lords, is a friend of Brown and his wife Sarah. He contributed £45,000 to Brown’s leadership campaign and is reported to have given more than £400,000 to Labour.

The questionable expenses claims were made between 2004 and 2006 when Paul was living in a London apartment block where he and his family own property worth £14m. But he told the Lords his main home was a flat at the three-star Bignell Park hotel, Oxfordshire, owned by his company. This enabled him to claim more than £20,000 a year.

The flat has for years been the live-in quarters for the hotel’s manager. Prenusha Chetty, the current manager, could not recall Paul ever staying in the flat or the hotel. Her predecessor, Mark Stevens, said he had lived in the flat for the entire period that Paul was calling it his main home. He said: “I don’t think he ever had a night at the hotel.”

On Friday Paul said the flat had been his main home because he spent time there while deciding whether to buy a country home.

He said: “The manager lives there and I always had the opportunity to tell him to go and sleep in the hotel — if I wanted to sleep. Or I slept in the hotel. But I didn’t spend that many nights there.”

When pressed on whether he actually spent a night in his main home, he replied “no”. He added: “It didn’t happen. But I never told you I slept there.”

Source: ' Sunday Times '

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