A VERY SHABBY REVENGE?

Last week over 200 unelected peers voted to make it far harder for journalists to investigate corruption. In this devastating dossier, we reveal how a THIRD of them have been exposed by the media they’re seeking to muzzle – for scandals from expenses fidd

FOR a moment, imagine a dodgy foreign country where lawmakers, whose epic venality had been exposed by the Press, decided to pass a law to stop newspapers investigating such behaviour in the future.

Doubtless you would be comforted, when reading about this appalling action, by the knowledge that you’re lucky enough to live in a centuriesold democracy which is impervious to such selfinterested manipulation of the law. Well, think again. Last week, just over 200 unelected members of the House of Lords voted to introduce draconian new laws that make it significantly harder for British journalists to investigate corruption and other scandals.

More than a third of them had previously been involved in major scandals that were originally exposed by the media they are now seeking to muzzle.

They include two convicted criminals, 52 who were caught exploiting the expenses system, 18 named in lobbying scandals, and 14 more who have been accused of sexual or financial sleaze.

Several have been suspended from the Lords because of their misdemeanours, and more than ten have been required to repay money they wrongly took from the taxpayer.

Eleven of them are profiled on these pages, including perhaps the most egregious figure in Westminster’s recent history: the disgraced former Labour peer, Baroness Uddin.

A former social worker and chum of Cherie Blair, appointed to the Lords in the late Nineties, her name has rightly become associated with corruption.

The reason? An expenses scandal first exposed by the sort of dogged investigative journalism she has just voted to undermine.

It began in 2009, when Sunday newspaper journalists discovered that the property where Uddin officially claimed to be living was a tiny flat in Maidstone, Kent.

THE residence appeared to be empty and uninhabited, while her actual family home, where she spent almost every night, turned out to be in London’s Wapping. By falsely saying she lived outside the capital, Uddin had been able to claim about £30,000 a year in expenses.

In total, it soon emerged that she’d helped herself to £123,349 of public money. An antisleaze committee looked into the matter, finding that Uddin had acted ‘in bad faith’. Then the police investigated.

Though she eventually avoided prosecution, the Baroness was suspended from the Lords for a record 18 months in 2010, and also from the Labour Party. In the real world, employees caught with fingers in the till are, quite rightly, sacked. But in British politics, things are different: corrupt parliamentarians are allowed to carry on shaping our laws.

So it goes that, after repaying the money she’d taken, Uddin was allowed to return to Parliament in 2012. She’s been there ever since, claiming £300 taxfree for each and every day she turns up. Last year, taxpayers gave her £36,300 in ‘attendance allowances’.

It is, all told, a shameful state of affairs. Then, on Wednesday night, came a chance for Baroness Uddin to exact revenge.

She and other members of the Lords voted to tack two antiPress amendments onto a Data Protection Bill.

One will make almost every newspaper pay all the legal costs in data protection court cases — even those they win.

The other would resurrect the Leveson inquiry, but crucially it would scrap any parts that put the police and politicians under the spotlight and, instead, focus exclusively on alleged misdeeds by the Press. Both measures would severely limit free speech, deal a devastating blow to investigative journalism, and be a boon to the wealthy, powerful, and corrupt, making it immeasurably harder for Fleet Street to hold them to account — one of the bulwarks of a free country. No one could impute the motives of the proposers of these two amendments; Baroness Hollins, who has campaigned for tougher controls on the Press since being distressed by newspaper reporting after her daughter was left paralysed in a 2005 knife attack, and Earl Attlee, a Conservativesupporting hereditary peer, grandson of postwar Labour PM Clement Attlee.

No doubt many peers also voted on points of principle. However, given the track record of Uddin and some of the other peers who endorsed these new laws, one might speculate that, for them, such an outcome was exactly the point.

They come from every party and political tradition. Take, for example, Lord Blencathra, one of just two Conservatives to support the Press crackdown.

Previously known as David Maclean, the former Home Office minister was forced to issue an apology to the House three years ago after The Independent revealed he’d signed a £12,000amonth contract to lobby on behalf of the Government of the Cayman Islands.

Then there is Baroness Tonge, exLib Dem and a veteran pro-Palestine activist. She was kicked out of her party in disgrace and forced to sit as an independent after the Jewish Chronicle revealed she’d hosted a meeting in Parliament at which a number of antiSemitic comments were made by the audience. She resigned at the same time.

Or consider Labour’s Lord

Some peers have very old scores to settle . . .

Truscott, a former energy minister who, in 2009, became the first peer since the English Civil War to be suspended from the House.

He’d been caught by undercover Sunday Times reporters offering to work ‘behind the scenes’ in Parliament to amend Britain’s laws on behalf of a fictional foreign company in exchange for £72,000.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, given their past histories, all three of these politicians — whose misdeeds were, remember, exposed by the Press — now want to muzzle journalists.

Speaking of the ‘cash for influence’ scandal that brought down Truscott, two fellow Labour peers, Lord Moonie and Lord Snape, were both caught in the same newspaper sting.

Though neither was suspended (anti-sleaze watchdogs found insufficient evidence to prove guilt), each was ordered to apologise for having taken an ‘inappropriate attitude to the rules’ governing Parliament.

At this stage, I should point out that the two anti-Press laws passed by narrow majorities of 17 and 29 respectively. It’s therefore no exaggeration to say that they would not have passed without the support of Lords whose misbehaviour has been exposed by journalists.

Some of this number may feel they have old scores to settle. They include, for example, Lord (Paddy) Ashdown and Lord (John) Prescott, whose extramarital affairs were exposed by Fleet Street, and Lord (Peter) Mandelson, who twice had to resign from the Cabinet after financial misdeeds were uncovered by the Press.

Others have more recent gripes. In December, Lord Bassam, one of the 180 Labour peers to back last week’s Press crackdown, quit as his party’s Chief Whip after being caught claiming £36,366 for overnight stays in London despite commuting from Brighton. He’d also been claiming £6,400 a year in train tickets and cab fares. He denied breaching rules but has agreed to repay more than £40,000.

PErHAPS inevitably, the most eye-catching opponents of Press freedom also include the notorious Lib Dem, Lord rennard. His battles with newspapers stretch back to 2009, when he quit as chief executive of his party after it emerged that he’d claimed £41,000 in expenses for running a second home despite owning a flat within two miles of Westminster.

rennard was cleared of breaking rules, only for Channel Four News to then reveal in 2013 that multiple female party activists had accused him of sexual harassment.

Alleged to have preyed on ‘at least 30’ victims, several of whom courageously spoke to the Press, he was suspended from the Lib Dems. He denied wrongdoing, and was eventually readmitted, after apologising for possibly ‘encroaching on the personal space’ of four of them. When this sexual harassment scandal broke, the Mail revealed a party worker who accused rennard of wrongdoing had been phoned at home by Lord Stoneham, a senior Lib Dem peer. She claimed to have been ‘aggressively’ told not to talk to reporters.

The same Lord Stoneham was one of the 73 Lib Dems (including rennard) who backed both anti-Press laws last week.

All told, around a dozen of the 52 anti-Press peers who were caught up in expenses scandals were ultimately forced to hand back money that had been wrongly claimed.

Many are former MPs, including Lord Thurso (who repaid £548 he’d over-claimed for council tax) and Baroness (Angela) Smith of Basildon, who overclaimed £1,033 for council tax and services on her flat in South-East London.

Thurso has the added distinction of being one of 17 peers exposed before Christmas by the Daily Mirror for claiming a combined £400,000 in expenses during the previous year, despite having failed to speak in the Lords chamber, sit on a committee, or table a single question.

Two other members of this group — Scottish ex-Labour MP Baroness Adams and Lord Haworth — mustered sufficient energy to make it into the chamber last week in order to vote to muzzle the Press.

A further six Peers who backed anti-newspaper amendments have been criticised for exploiting a loophole in Parliamentary rules known as the ‘double bubble’ — whereby married couples who both sit in Parliament are allowed to each claim £165 a night for staying in London, despite living together.

They include Baroness Hollis and her partner Lord Howarth, shown to have two ‘main homes’ next door to each other on the same Norwich street, plus a shared home in Westminster which is mortgage-free.

Others with controversial expenses arrangements include Baroness Goudie, a wealthy Labour donor revealed in 2009 to be living in a £1.5 million London home with her husband while simultaneously claiming £230,000 in expenses, partly by claiming her main home was in Glasgow.

Following a year-long investigation, the Clerk of the Parliaments, Michael Pownall, said he had ‘doubts’ about the designation of the flat as a main residence, but no further action was taken after Baroness Goudie apologised and voluntarily repaid £5,130.50.

A similar controversy enveloped Viscount Falkland, then a Lib Dem peer. He registered a two-bedroom oast house in Kent, owned by his wife’s aunt, as his main home, despite not being on the electoral roll there.

In reality, he was living in Clapham, South London, just three miles from Westminster. The arrangement allowed him to claim £125,000 in expenses.

He, too, voted to muzzle the Press. Meanwhile, the 18 peers caught up in lobbying scandals were all exposed by newspapers or TV documentaries.

They include Lord Mackenzie, a former police chief turned Labour peer suspended from the Lords for six months in 2013, and Lord (Jack) Cunningham, the former Blairite minister, who was filmed by undercover Sunday Times reporters appearing to offer a personal lobbying service for £12,000 to a fictitious South Korean energy firm.

CuNNINGHAM was later cleared by the anti-sleaze watchdog as there was ‘insufficient evidence’ that rules had been broken, but made a ‘profound and unreserved’ apology.

Again, it must be stressed that while it’s impossible to be sure exactly what motivated these Peers’ anti-Press votes, not one example of their wrongdoing would ever have been exposed were it not for Fleet Street.

All of which brings us to the question of what happens next.

The (elected) Government has promised to stop the Lords’ draconian crackdown on the Press, with Culture Secretary Matthew Hancock calling its amendments a ‘hammer blow’ that will ‘undermine high quality journalism [and] fail to resolve challenges the media face’.

But to do that, they’ll have to overturn the rules in the Commons. However, the Tories have no majority, and Labour and the Lib Dems have already shown their willingness to back anti-Press measures, however illiberal they may be.