Lord Taylor charged over expenses on relative's house

Lord Taylor of Warwick has become the sixth parliamentarian to face charges over his expenses after allegations he claimed £11,000 on home owned by a distant relative.

Lord Taylor has been charged over his expenses Photo: PA

The Crown Prosecution Service announced that the Conservative peer had been charged with six counts of false accounting, and would appear before a Westminster magistrates’ court next month.

It follows disclosures in December that he had allegedly registered a house in Oxford belonging to the partner of his step brother’s son, without his knowledge or consent.

By declaring the property owned by Tristram Wyatt, a university academic who lives with Lord Taylor’s step-nephew Robert Taylor, as his primary residence, the peer was allegedly able to claim second home expenses on a house he owned in Ealing, west London.

When questions were first raised about Lord Taylor’s use of the House of Lords second home allowance last summer, he issued a statement disclosing that his main home was a property in which his late mother Enid had lived.

However, it emerged that this house, in Solihull in the west Midlands, had been sold in 2001, shortly before Mrs Taylor’s death, while the peer’s second home claims had continued until 2007.

It was later alleged that Lord Taylor had in fact registered a home owned by Mr Wyatt, a prominent zoologist, which he shared with Mr Taylor, a photographer, as his principle residence for the purposes of his expenses.

A 57-year-old barrister and former Conservative special adviser, Lord Taylor is the second Tory peer to charged with fraud over his parliamentary expenses, after Lord Hanningfield was accused of false accounting in February.

One current MP, Eric Illsley, and three former Labour MPs, Elliot Morley, David Chaytor and Jim Devine, are also awaiting trial. All five have had their party’s whip removed.

A Conservative spokesman said that Lord Taylor had voluntarily resigned from the party.

In a statement, Keir Starmer, the Director of Public Prosecutions, said that Lord Taylor was accused of dishonestly claiming more than £11,000 in overnight subsistence and mileage claims.

He added: "Having thoroughly reviewed the … evidence we have received from the Metropolitan Police in relation to parliamentary expenses, we concluded that there is sufficient evidence and it is in the public interest to bring criminal charges against Lord Taylor.

"In total the charges allege a sum in excess of £11,000 was dishonestly claimed over this period."

Lord Taylor became first black Conservative MP when he was made a peer in 1996, four years after losing the safe seat of Cheltenham for the Tories after suffering racist abuse from his own supporters.

Parliamentary records show that Lord Taylor made “overnight subsistence” claims totalling £73,000 between 2001 and 2007 by allegedly stating that his main home was outside London.

At the time, peers were able to claim up to £174 a night by stating that they needed reimbursement for the cost of a hotel or upkeep of a second home while staying away from their primary residence outside of the capital in order to attend Parliament.