FORMER Essex County Council leader Lord Hanningfield is set to be suspended from the House of Lords this week, after allegedly using his beloved chickens and pet dog as an excuse for the latest "clocking-in-and-out" parliamentary scandal.
A House of Lords Privileges and Conduct Committee met this week for a disciplinary hearing, and was expected to suspend the 73-year-old peer from Parliament until the next general election and order him to repay £3,330 worth of falsely-claimed £300-a-day attendance allowance.
A source said that Lord Hanningfield, formerly known as Paul White, told the committee he must claim a full day's allowance for visiting Parliament so he can pay his four employees, one of whom cares for his Bernese mountain dog Jefferson and rare-breed chickens in his absence.
Speaking to the Chronicle from his home, he said: "No, I did not use the chickens as an excuse, it's ridiculous. "You can see my list of employees. You will find out everything in due course."
The House of Lords launched an investigation in December after the Daily Mirror filmed Hanningfield clocking into Parliament on 19 occasions in July 2013, collecting a total of £5,700 in attendance allowance and claiming £470 for travel costs.
On 11 of those 19 visits he was there for no more than 40 minutes, with his shortest stay clocked at 21 minutes, racking up £3,300 from the daily £300 allowance.
In a report expected to be published today, reflecting on the final disciplinary hearing on Tuesday, he is expected to be forced to repay that £3,300 and suspended until the general election, expected next year.
In December he told the Chronicle: "It's a storm in a teacup – I haven't broken any rules, I haven't done anything wrong."
But the House of Lords source said Hanningfield routinely claimed for a full day's £300 allowance, instead of the half-day £150 allowance, to foot the bill for his dog and chicken-sitter.
Hanningfield, who was handed his peerage in 1998 for his help founding the Local Government Association, was forced to step down from the Government front bench in the Lords, resign as Essex County Council leader and suspended from the Conservative Party in February 2010 after being charged with fraud over £14,000 of Parliamentary expenses.
Between 2006 and 2009, Hanningfield had falsely claimed for hotel rooms in London when in fact he had been chauffeured back to his home in West Hanningfield at the Essex taxpayer's expense – inventing next-day train fares and petrol claims to avoid detection.
He served nine weeks of a nine-month jail sentence in 2011 and was reinstated into the Lords in April 2012, after repaying £30,000 to Parliament.
In November 2012 Essex County Council released full details of Hanningfield's credit card spending, amounting to £287,000 between 2005 and 2010, including lavish meals out and trips abroad. Despite this, a further police investigation was dropped. The authority said about £40,000 of his bill was irrefutably wrongly claimed and is to this day attempting to reclaim the money.
Essex County Council Liberal Democrat group leader Mike Mackrory said he would ask at a full council meeting next week for an update, adding: "What we're talking about is taxpayers' money.
"There are hundreds of thousands of people worse off than he is and they are having to pay their council tax and very often taken to court because they are in arrears, yet this man, in terms of paying back to Essex County Council, just seems to be putting up two fingers."
