Conservative peer Lord Hanningfield convicted of expenses fraud

The courts have convicted Conservative peer Lord Hanningfield of expenses fraud. The conviction follows his failed attempt earlier in the year with other accused MPs to claim that Parliamentary Privilege protected them from prosecution.

The Guardian reports:

Lord 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.