A senior hereditary peer faces being suspended from the Lords after being found to have fiddled his travel expenses.
The Earl of Shrewsbury, 73, is to be barred for two weeks after an investigation found he claimed car mileage ‘for journeys he did not make’ and used a taxpayer-funded railcard to go to a private business meeting.
Shrewsbury, full name Charles Henry John Benedict Crofton Chetwynd Chetwynd-Talbot, is the senior earl in the peerage of England and one of the last 92 remaining hereditary peers in the Lords.
The probe came after a newspaper investigation found the former Tory whip claimed for a first-class rail ticket to attend a board meeting of a commercial firm.
He made the claim just three months after returning to the Lords after serving a previous nine-month ban for paid lobbying, one of the longest suspensions ever handed to a peer.
Lord Shrewsbury admitted that he had breached the rules and has paid back £199.52.
But the Lords Conduct Committee reprimanded him for ‘intentionally’ using his railcard for personal travel and being ‘unacceptably casual’ in his approach to mileage claims for four journeys he did not make.
It also noted that ‘these breaches of the rules had come just three months after Lord Shrewsbury’s return from a previous suspension, and that although the previous breach had nothing to do with allowances, a common feature of both cases was (his) failure to maintain a clear distinction between his parliamentary and business activities.’
The Earl of Shrewsbury, 73, is to be barred for two weeks after an investigation found he claimed car mileage ‘for journeys he did not make’ and used a taxpayer-funded railcard to go to a private business meeting.
But the Lords Conduct Committee reprimanded him for ‘intentionally’ using his railcard for personal travel and being ‘unacceptably casual’ in his approach to mileage claims for four journeys he did not make.
Shrewsbury was first suspended after it was revealed he was paid around £57,000 by a company called SpectrumX between June 2020 and January 2022.
During the Covid pandemic, the firm was seeking regulatory approval for various sanitiser products, including hand sanitisers and a walk-in disinfectant tunnel.
A report found that he offered to provide ‘parliamentary advice and other matters’ to the firm and directly approached ministers and officials – including former health secretary Matt Hancock – in a bid to promote their products.
It was found the peer had breached rules on ‘exercising parliamentary influence’ and ‘providing parliamentary advice of services’ in return for payment.
