Council leader ‘too ill’ to visit stricken city ... but well enough to pick up Lords expenses

THE leader of Wiltshire Council faced calls to quit last night after it emerged she has been working in her £300-a-day role as a peer despite claiming she was ‘too ill’ to visit worried Salisbury residents following the nerve agent attack.

Jane Scott did not visit the stricken cathedral city until Friday – 19 days after the attack on March 4.

In the days after the poisoning, residents had demanded to know why their council leader had not visited the city to offer reassurance.

Her deputy, John Thompson, told a local newspaper that the Tory peer had been ‘extremely ill’ with a fever that she had picked up during a recent trip to visit hospitals in South Africa.

But it later emerged she had been working in the House of Lords, where she is entitled to a £300 daily allowance.

Last night Baroness Scott confirmed to The Mail on Sunday that she intends to claim the money. The peer said she had been meeting Ministers about the attack but she refused to name those she had met.

She confirmed that she had been in the Lords for the three days following the attack, and a further two days last week. The peer, 70, told The Mail on Sunday she became ill ‘with a nasty bug’ towards the end of the first week after the poisoning.

But this contradicts what she told the Salisbury Journal last week, when she said that she had ‘probably gone home very ill’ on Tuesday, March 6. Amid growing questions about her whereabouts, Mr Thompson told the local newspaper on March 13 that she had not been able to visit the city because she had picked up a ‘rather unpleasant disease’ while on a working visit to South Africa. But neither Mr Thompson nor Baroness Scott informed the public at the time that she had been working in the Lords. Baroness Scott, a horse breeder and wife of a banker, last night denied misleading her constituents and said she still intended to pocket her Lords allowances. She said she had been working ‘solely in the interests of Salisbury’ and that ‘even when I was really ill I was still in full control’. But there is anger at her lack on clarity on when exactly she fell ill and last night she was even facing resignation calls from fellow Tories.

One senior councillor, who asked not to be named, said: ‘I think she has to go over this. Her story is all over the place.

‘One minute she was ill on the Tuesday, the next it’s at the end of the week.

‘She can’t properly account for why she didn’t go to Salisbury until almost three weeks after the attack but she could still travel 100 miles to London.’

Baroness Scott also faced calls to quit from dozens of residents commenting on the Salisbury Journal website. One post read: ‘She needs to resign and fast.’

Another said: ‘She is so out of touch to her job and what we need for such role. We need to call for her resignation.’