A Birmingham peer has been jailed for 12 months for Parliamentary expenses fraud.
Lord Taylor of Warwick, aged 58, wrongly claimed more than £11,000 from the taxpayer for travel and accommodation.
The Birmingham-born peer, a former headboy of Moseley Grammar School, told House of Lords officials that his main residence was a house in Oxford – when he really lived in west London.
Passing sentence at Southwark Crown Court this week, Mr Justice Saunders said Lord Taylor had lied while under oath. He said: “The expenses scandal has affected the standing not just of the House of Commons but also the House of Lords.”
In previous hearings, the court heard that Lord Taylor never stayed at the Oxford property, which was owned by his half-nephew’s partner, and only visited it twice.
He was convicted in January of six counts of false accounting for making £11,277.80 worth of fraudulent claims between March 2006 and October 2007.
Lord Taylor made his first bid for a place in the House of Commons in the 1987 election as a candidate in Birmingham Perry Barr.
After failing to win Cheltenham for the Tories in 1992 he was appointed to the House of Lords by John Major as Baron Taylor of Warwick. But he resigned the Conservative whip last year – effectively expelling him from the Conservative group in the Lords – although he continues to be a peer.
