Flashback: Environment boss Lord Smith -- The peer who earned £161 in 10 minutes by 'clocking in and out' of the House of Lords

By Dan Newling, 20th July 2009
The Daily Mail
Nov. 10, 2009

Former Cabinet Minister Lord Smith has been seen 'clocking in and out' of the Lords within minutes.

Even such brief visits mean he can legitimately claim £161.50 for attending the House that day.

Last Wednesday Lord Smith - the former Cabinet minister Chris Smith - arrived in his car at the Houses of Parliament at 7.45pm.

He parked and was seen striding purposefully towards the Lords.

Ten minutes later, his Parliamentary duties apparently completed, he was driving off again, the Sunday Times reported. It was one of three brief visits last week.

Lord Smith earns £220,000 a year from two quango jobs. His claims for attending the Lords bring in more than £20,000 a year on top.

His apparently brief working day is an extreme example of how 'Pop-in Peers' use a legal loophole.

Under current rules, members of the Lords need only show their faces briefly in the debating chamber - to be ticked off on a register by a clerk - to qualify for daily allowances of £86.50 for subsistence and £75 for office costs.

Some also collect £174 for staying overnight in London. They do not have to speak or vote.

Last week LibDem Lord Tyler claimed that up to 100 of the 740 Lords members regularly 'popped-in' in this way.

He said: 'There is great deal of frustration among the more active members of the House about the way in which the system is open to exploitation.'

The Sunday Times said its reporters clocked up to 50 peers spending less than five minutes a day in the debating chamber.

Lord Smith, who became a life peer in 2005, works three days a week as chairman of the Environment Agency and two and a half days for the Advertising Standards Authority. Since November, he has spoken in only one Lords debate, asked no questions and taken part in just nine of 62 votes.

He said: 'This is the way the allowance system operates.

'You register attendance in the chamber, you may well stay on to listen or participate in debates, as I sometimes do, or you may go off to other meetings in the Palace of Westminster or to work in your parliamentary office. Attendance in the chamber is not the only mark of participation.'