Lord Hanningfield found guilty of expenses fraud

Conservative peer will be sentenced in six weeks after denying six counts of false accounting
Lord Hanningfield was found guilty after denying six counts of false accounting
Lord Hanningfield was found guilty after denying six counts of false accounting. Photograph: Sean Dempsey/PA

The Tory peer Lord Hanningfield has been found guilty of six counts of expenses fraud.

Hanningfield – tried at Chelmsford crown court under his name, Paul White, on Thursday – had denied six counts of false accounting relating to his parliamentary expenses.

The prosecution said he had claimed for overnight stays in London, between March 2006 and April 2009, when he had actually returned home to Essex.

White told the court he had seen it as a "living out of London allowance" rather than overnight subsistence. The jury found the 70-year-old peer guilty on all six counts and he will be sentenced in six weeks.

White, who was an Essex councillor for 40 years and led the council from 2001 until he was charged in 2010, was made a life peer in 1998. He was a frontbench spokesman on business while the Conservatives were in opposition, but was suspended from the parliamentary party after being charged.

During the trial, he said he "quite honestly assumed" he could claim the maximum amount after learning that this was what 85% of peers did.

Asked by his defence counsel why he thought he was entitled to the full sum, he said: "The £30-£40 a day that was then available on the daily allowance was very little."

The peer, from West Hanningfield, near Chelmsford, told the court he spent "a minute a month" completing the Lords expenses claim form in exactly the same way each time, not even including rises in train fares.

"If I had known how important some people saw those forms [as being], I would have done much more. I didn't see it as self-certifying, I saw it as means of getting expenses," he said.

"No one ever told me those forms were so important. I am horrified to be where I am now because of those forms."

He said he had been told nothing about expenses when he was given an induction into the House of Lords for new peers and paid "very little attention" to the guidelines on the back of the claim forms.

Hanningfield said many other peers saw the Lords as a "club". He alleged that another peer who had a main home in London had designated a cottage in Wales as their primary address and claimed the full allowances for overnight subsistence.

The court heard that White, from a farming background, receives only the state pension and a small agricultural pension of £120 a month. He would be entitled to a local government pension for his 40 years on Essex county council, but "never got around to filling in the forms", the jury was told.

The peer said he paid off the mortgage on his bungalow 10 years ago, but recently remortgaged it to help pay for his lawyers during the trial.

Prosecution over his expenses spelled the end of his long career in Essex politics; he stepped down as the county council leader the day he was charged.

In 2005, he was behind a parliamentary question which revealed that Tony Blair had spent more than £1,800 of public money on cosmetics and make-up artists for media appearances since becoming prime minister.

White became emotional during his trial when he was asked whether it had been appropriate to claim back the cost of paying someone to walk his dog.

"As I lived alone, I wouldn't survive without my dog – it's someone I could talk to and walk with," he said, adding that he had worked long hours and allowed work to "take over my life".

During his trial, he denied living an extravagant lifestyle, saying: "Most of my clothes are from Marks & Spencer. I enjoy the occasional glass of wine but that's about it. I have no savings, no stocks and shares, nothing like that."

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