Lords Privileges and Conduct Committee recommends suspension of Lord Hanningfield

The Committee's report comes after Lord Hanningfield was investigated by the independent Lords Commissioner for Standards, who found he breached the Code of Conduct in claiming the daily attendance allowance on 11 days in July 2013 when he had not undertaken any parliamentary work. The Commissioner also found that in doing so Lord Hanningfield ‘failed to act on his personal honour.' The Committee has also recommended that Lord Hanningfield be required to repay the £3,300 he wrongly claimed for those days. 

In his report to the Privileges and Conduct Committee, the Commissioner states that to claim the daily attendance allowance Members must both attend the House of Lords and undertake parliamentary work on the day of the claim. The Commissioner states that his finding does not set a threshold for the amount of time a Member must be on the parliamentary estate to claim, but rather that Lord Hanningfield was not able to show that he undertook any parliamentary work on the days in question. 

The Committee's recommended sanctions must now be approved by the House of Lords before coming into force.  The House will be asked to approve the report and the suspension on Tuesday 13 May. 

In a new report, also published today, the Privileges and Conduct Committee recommends the following changes to the Code of Conduct.

• A Member sentenced to a term of imprisonment should be deemed to have breached the Code of Conduct. The case would be passed to the Sub-Committee on Lords' Conduct to recommend a sanction. This would sit alongside the provisions of the House of Lords Reform (No. 2) Bill, often referred to as the Byles Bill which provides for the expulsion of a member sentenced to imprisonment for more than a year, and would apply even where the Member is sentenced to imprisonment for a year or less.
• When signing to claim for the daily allowance, Members should give an explicit written undertaking that in doing so they are “acting on their personal honour”.
• A new Code of Conduct for Members' Staff should be introduced, including a requirement to register all employment, any financial interest in businesses or organisations involved in parliamentary lobbying and any gifts received above £140 in value that arise from their work in Parliament. The Code will also require Members' staff to abstain from lobbying or using access to Parliament to further outside interests in return for payment or other reward. Breaches of the Code could result in the individual's parliamentary pass being removed. 

In recent months, the House has agreed various amendments which have tightened the Code of Conduct. In January the House introduced two new sanctions for breaches of the Code of Conduct: denial of access for a specified period to the system of financial support for Members; and denial of access for a specified period to the facilities of the House.  These penalties cannot be applied to breaches of the Code which occurred prior to their introduction, including those Lord Hanningfield has been found to have committed. 

In March the House approved a report which set out a new offence of expressing a clear willingness to breach the Code of Conduct, gave new guidance to Members on how to deal with lobbyists, reduced the threshold for Members having to register gifts, benefits and hospitality, and gave the Commissioner power to investigate conduct that occurred more than four years before a complaint was made.