KICK OUT THE COCAINE PEER
Scots standards boss in Lords snorts drug with call girls He quits deputy speaker role as police investigate Now calls for him to be expelled from Parliament
A peer filmed snorting cocaine with prostitutes was facing calls last night to stand down from the House of Lords.
Lord Sewel, 69, was reported to the police and quit as deputy speaker of the Lords after the video emerged.
Until yesterday he chaired a committee on the conduct of peers and has said: ‘The actions of a few damage our reputation. Scandals make good headlines.’
Outraged watchdogs and politicians say the married father of four should be booted out of Parliament. New laws brought in on July 16 now allow peers to expel colleagues for misconduct.
Obtained by a Sunday newspaper, the video shows John Buttifant Sewel – a minister under Tony Blair – romping with two women at his rent-protected flat near Parliament.
The Scot snorted cocaine from one of the prostitutes’ breasts after turning a photo of his wife face down on a desk. The women were paid £200 each.
Scotland Yard is under pressure to investigate the video, arrest the shamed peer and search his apartment. Cocaine possession attracts a maximum sentence of seven years. Yesterday morning
Sewel resigned as chairman of the privileges and conduct committee and as deputy speaker. The roles gave him a salary of £8 ,500 and a taxfree annual housing allowance of £36,000.
He was also a British delegate to Nato’s parliamentary assembly – a situation that now raises security fears. And in the 800-strong House of Lords, he has been involved in passing legislation on sexual offences acts, brothel-keeping and prostitution.
Alistair Graham, former head of the Committee on Standards in Public Life, said Sewel’s behaviour was staggering and he could have no ‘credibility with the public as a legislator’.
‘You can argue that there are too many peers in the House of Lords already, so standing down would be in the public interest in two ways,’ he said. ‘He should consider stepping down because the public have got to have trust in the people who are legislating on their behalf. How can they have trust in someone who is alleged to have broken the law?
‘It is difficult to have trust in somebody who has had such a conflict between his role as the chairman of the conduct committee and his personal behaviour. As an ordinary member of the House of Lords, he will be entitled to a basic subsistence allowance of £300 a day. The public will be appalled that given his personal behaviour as deputy speaker, he should continue to receive public funds.’
Kevin Barron, a Labour MP and chairman of the Commons committee on standards, said: ‘I welcome his decision to resign from his com- mittee. Under the circumstances, he’s hardly in a position to sit in judgment on people.’
Asked whether he should consider resigning his Lords seat, Mr Barron replied: ‘It does look bad. It’s a matter for the individual but I think maybe he should consider that.’
Former anti-sleaze MP Martin Bell said: ‘His position in the House of Lords is untenable.’
John Mann, Labour MP for Bassetlaw, said: ‘He should immediately retire and never be seen in the Lords again. Public respect for Parliament couldn’t be any lower as it is.
‘If he doesn’t resign, his own committee will have no choice but to suspend him. He’ll end up in front of his own committee, which is absurd.
‘He has been a real barrier to transparency. His committee refuses to act on virtually anything, and notoriously so.’
The Lords code maintains that members must ‘always act on their personal honour’. Sewel
‘Public respect could
not be lower’
was elected chairman of committees in 2012, and he also served as chairman of the conduct committee. In that job he drew up a code of conduct that insists on ‘selflessness, integrity, accountability, openness, honest and leadership’.
Baroness D’Souza, the Lords Speaker, branded his behaviour ‘shocking and unacceptable’ and said she would be calling in Scotland Yard.
Police sources indicated they would assess the evidence but pointed out that drug-taking allegations were notoriously difficult to prove when there is only video evidence.
The peer was caught on the film, which was given to the Sun on Sunday, snorting lines of white powder – believed to be cocaine. He is also heard complaining that he struggles to afford the £1,000 a month rent on his flat.
He is asked whether he receives expenses, and suggests that he gets a flat-rate allowance of £200 a day. In fact, the allowance for Lords is £300 a day, and did not apply to Sewel as he was a salaried member. He may have been talking about the tax-free officeholder’s allowance, which is worth £36,000 a year. He was entitled to this payment, which covers housing costs, because he had declared his main residence to be in Aberdeenshire.
Backbench peers are allowed to charge £300 a day in attendance allowance – letting them to charge the taxpayer up to £43,000 a year.
Sewel was made a life peer by Mr Blair and helped push through an important convention relating to Scottish devolution. He is now non affiliated.
Before the new legislation of July 16, lords could only expel colleagues sentenced to more than a year in jail – or impose a suspension for the remainder of the parliasmentary term.
But the new powers means suspensions can be imposed for any length of time and, for the first time, the upper house can boot out peers at will.
IT reads like the script of some grotesque political farce.
A married peer in charge of upholding standards in the House of Lords strips naked and snorts cocaine from the breast of one of two £200-a-night prostitutes he has summoned to his home.
This lurid scene – during which his Lordship also dons an orange bra – takes place at his subsidised apartment in the shadow of Westminster.
After bragging that he routinely paid ‘working girls’ to visit him, he complains his taxpayer-funded salary of £84,000 plus allowances isn’t enough to live on.
This is no outlandish satire. It’s a true story involving Lord Sewel, a former junior minister in the Blair government who was until yesterday Deputy Speaker of the Lords and chairman of i ts Privileges and Conduct Committee.
Sewel has rightly resigned these roles but he should now be stripped of his peerage and the criminal allegations against him investigated by the police.
Beyond his disgrace, however, this squalid affair shines a wider spotlight on the disturbingly low calibre of many peers. There are of course some who are conscientious and do important work but they are vastly outnumbered by the cronies, donors and venal party hacks for whom the House of Lords is little more than a swanky dining club and daily source of free public money. There are more than 800 members and the total is expected to reach 1,000 by 2020. The fact that there are only 400 seats in the chamber shows how absurdly bloated their numbers have become.
So instead of stuffing it with yet more mediocre placemen – as he is preparing to do with his latest honours list – isn’t it time the Prime Minister came up with a plan to slash the dead wood and get the Lords back down to a workable size? It should be a venerable chamber providing crucial checks and balances to the work of Commons. The Sewel fiasco is just another illustration of how it’s rapidly becoming a joke.