EAST LONDON PRESS Update on UK 'Work and pensions' cabinet minister James Purnell joining as a character in the sleaze and fraud news reports

0245 Hrs London ['Bank Holiday'] Monday 4 May 2009:

EAST LONPON PRESS report

EAST LONDON PRESS Update on UK 'Work and pensions' cabinet minister James Purnell joining as a character in the sleaze and fraud news reports his various 'Party' colleagues. Including 'Bethnal Green Baroness' Pola Uddin.


PURNELL heads the DWP the UK Department for Work and Pensions. On its books about Tower Hamlets, a large majority of persons reporting low income or no income are from the section of the population that Pola Uddin says she identifies with.

At the time of writing, we could not finalise verification of several details that have emerged during the weekend.

One concerns Ian Dale's reference to the 'Housing Association' that allegedly owns the property in Wapping in which Pola Uddin actually lives.

Other aspects of Pola Uddin’s claimed ‘political and community life’ have caused outpourings of mirth in the East End





DAILY MAIL, updated file on Pola Uddin as at 0142 Hrs 4 may 2009


Labour peer 'claims £100,000 on vacant flat she said was her home'
By DAN NEWLING
Last updated at 1:42 AM on 04th May 2009

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Baroness Uddin has been claiming expenses on a 'unoccupied' flat in Kent

A Labour peer faces a possible police investigation for fraud after she claimed £100,000 in expenses for a flat she appears never to have lived in.

Baroness Uddin received the money by claiming that the apparently deserted flat in Maidstone, Kent, was her 'main home'.

This meant the Baroness, Britain's first female Muslim peer, was able to claim nearly £30,000 a year towards the cost of staying at a separate London address while she attended Parliament.

Members of the House of Lords are entitled to a daily allowance of up to £86.50 for 'meals and refreshments' and travel around Westminster, up to £174 for overnight accommodation in London and office costs of £75 a day.

They are also entitled to £116 per night accommodation maintenance allowance for a second home and 'additional office costs' up to £75 for up to 40 days.

The accommodation allowance is available to any peer 'whose main residence is outside greater London and who maintains a residence in London for the purpose of attending sittings of the House'.



'Main home': The flat in Maistone, Kent, which neighbours say has lain empty


There is no official definition of a 'main residence' in the rules, but Mary Morgan, director of public information at the Lords said: 'A member will know what his main residence is. It's where they live. For the purposes of claiming expenses it's where they travel to and from.' However, neighbours at the Baroness's ground floor flat in Maidstone say that since she bought the property in 2005, they have never seen her.

A plumber who entered the apartment last month described it as 'uninhabitable' - covered in dust with just an old mattress on the floor to sleep on.

By contrast, neighbours at her other property - a three- storey house in Wapping, East London - said she is regularly seen there.

The Wapping address is where the 49-year-old peer brought up her five children and is registered to vote.

Her personal website describes the East End as her 'backyard' and 'my home for over 30 years'.

Every time she has registered as a director of a company, she has given her London address, which is four miles from Parliament. However, the Baroness has told the Lords' expenses authorities that it is only her 'second address'.


In the financial year to March 2008 she claimed £29,600 in overnight accommodation allowance. If she has done the same every year since buying the Kent flat, she would have earned more than £100,000.


More...
MPs' secretaries threaten to strike as even they are caught up in expenses row
Yesterday LibDem frontbencher Lord Oakeshott said: 'An empty property can't be a peer's main residence. The Lords authorities must check the facts of this case and investigate.' Baroness Uddin denies any wrongdoing and has instructed libel lawyers to represent her.

When approached in Maidstone at the weekend, the Baroness refused to allow a journalist into the flat to check it was being lived in.

In a statement she said: 'The Wapping house is rented while I own the property in Maidstone. The Maidstone property is furnished and I strongly deny that I have never lived there. Indeed I have stayed there regularly since buying it.'


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its within the rule book so why not, everybody does it so why not the Baroness. in the words of the song "you gotta pick a pocket or two oo you gotta pick a pocket or two.

ken moody
sheffield
- ken moody, sheffield uk, 03/5/2009 17:15Click to rate Rating 278
Just shows the level that greed can plumb to... After all the cases of false expences claims one would have thought that the trough feeders would have had the common sense to realise that sooner or later they would be rumbled.
- Mac, New Town, 03/5/2009 17:13Click to rate Rating 287
Just check the utility bills for the period
- timothy timberlake, dorset, 03/5/2009 17:13Click to rate Rating 347
Are we really supposed to be suprised.?
- Paul, East London, 03/5/2009 17:08Click to rate Rating 281
The answer is simple. Get her to pay back all the spurious claims. But of course with Jackie Smitch on her side she'll claim it was all legal. Legal, perhaps. Thoroughly contemptible - certainly. Another nu lab peer completely discredited. Its not just Lord Mandy that gives the party a rotten name. They're all at it!!! Socialists to their last bottle of champagne...and blow the rest of us. Tony's Brave New World is crashing down all around us. Oh dear.
- Atrie, Oxford, 03/5/2009 17:02Click to rate Rating 287
It seems that most of them are rotten to the core!
- George Philips, SE London, 03/5/2009 17:00