Portrait of ‘Baroness of Excess’ to cost us £12k
TAXPAYERS are picking up a £12,000 bill for the House of Lords Speaker to have her portrait painted.
Baroness D’Souza was recently branded ‘the Baroness of Excess’ after racking up £8,500 on chauffeurs over three years.
Yesterday it emerged she is having her portrait painted at great cost, after the commission was signed off by the House of Lords’ Works of Art Committee.
The revelation drew criticism that she was out of touch with the public. Dia Chakravarty of the TaxPayers’ Alliance said: ‘This will not be welcome news to families struggling with the cost of living.’
A House of Lords spokesman said: ‘The Lord Speaker did not play a role in the proposal to commission a portrait of her. The Works of Art Committee is responsible for the purchase and commissioning of all works of art for the House of Lords.
‘Their policy is to commission portraits of all the presiding officers of the House. They have commissioned portraits of the last three Lord Chancellors in the House of Lords as well as the first Lord Speaker.
‘The cost of the portrait will be met from the committee’s existing budget. No additional funding has been made available.’
Last month it emerged that Lady D’Souza, 71, spent thousands on chauffeur-driven travel, business class travel and hotel stays. The crossbench peer and former university lecturer earns more than £100,000 for a largely ceremonial role and does not require an official car for security purposes. But she used a chauffeur-driven Mercedes E class to get to the Royal Opera House in June 2013.
On another occasion she spent £270 holding a Mercedes for fourand-a-half hours while she had lunch with the Japanese ambassador in Kensington Gardens, three miles from Parliament.
Using another Mercedes to get from Westminster to Canterbury for the enthronement of the Archbishop of Canterbury cost taxpayers £627.
The baroness’s expenses claims reveal she billed tens of thousands of pounds for business class flights and stays in high-end hotels costing up to £300 a night.
A ten-day official trip to Japan, Hong Kong and Taiwan in 2014 left a bill of nearly £26,000.