‘Baroness of Excess’ runs up £4k bill ...on f lowers
TAXPAYERS have picked up the bill for tens of thousands of pounds spent by the Speaker of the House of Lords on expenses including flowers for her office and an outing to the ballet for her guests.
Figures show Baroness D’Souza, nicknamed the ‘Baroness of Excess’ for her lavish spending, racked up nearly £4,000 on floral decorations and £30,000 entertaining dignitaries.
Hosting a group of Russian diplomats at a five-star hotel in Kensington cost the taxpayer just under £6,000.
Lady D’Souza, 71, also spent £890 taking them to see a ballet at the Royal Opera House in an outing aides said was designed to improve relations with Moscow.
The figures show that in one month alone, she spent £168 on flowers to decorate her office, and over the past five years she paid a total of £3,768 to the luxury florists Nora Wooll and Windowflowers.
The Lord Speaker’s bill for official entertainment totalled £30,000 and nearly £10,000 was spent on ceremonial clothes.
Details of the expenditure on Lady D’Souza’s House account over the past five years were disclosed after a Freedom of Information request by MailOnline.
Last year the peer notoriously ran up a £230 bill keeping a chauffeurdriven car waiting four hours while she watched an opera in Covent Garden. Then in January taxpayers picked up a £12,000 bill for her to have her portrait painted. The new figures show that instead of using in-house catering at Parliament, Lady D’Souza appears to have regularly drafted in outside firms for food and drinks.
Spending with the exclusive firm David Christopher included a £1,000 bill in July 2013 and £1,050 after the election last May.
Aides said Lady D’Souza tried to use the ‘most appropriate’ caterers and suggested only external companies could meet ‘special requirements’ such as Kosher meals.
The Lord Speaker also paid £2,280 for an outside communications firm, Caroline Cecil Associates, to advise on how to ‘promote the work and role of the House of Lords’.
A Lords spokesman said: ‘The Lord Speaker regularly hosts visitors to the UK in her office including foreign heads of state and other dignitaries.
‘The Lord Speaker’s Office budget covers all aspects of support required for the Lord Speaker to carry out her role including staff and associated costs which make up the majority of the overall budget.’
The spokesman added that since the Russian delegation’s visit last June, ‘the House of Lords has changed its policy and no longer pays to host visiting speakers or accepts offers by hosts of overseas visits to meet accommodation costs’.
Dia Chakravarty, of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said the spending raised ‘serious questions’.
THE millionaire peer Lord Bhatia peer was suspended from the House of Lords for a second time yesterday for ‘double-claiming’ expenses.
On 63 occasions, he claimed mileage from Parliament that he had also claimed from the Ethnic Minority Foundation, a charity he co-founded.
He was suspended for eight months and told to repay £756 after the House of Lords Committee for Privileges and Conduct found the claims to be a breach of his ‘personal honour’.
He was also suspended for eight months in 2010 over claims for overnight allowances and mileage.
‘Spending raises serious questions’