Not guilty of fiddling? Pull the Uddin one

Published: 05 May 2009

IT'S a while since he rode a winner, but the legendary Lester Piggott was still a star attraction handing out trophies at Newmarket races.

Lester, of course, was lost to the racing scene for a year after being jailed for tax fraud.

And when he came out he was further humiliated by being stripped of his OBE.

More medals may soon be making a return journey as claims of Army heroism in Afghanistan are investigated.

If porkies have been told, those involved will rightly lose their awards.

So why can't we apply this rule to the House of Lords?

It's a disgrace that men and women can keep the titles Lord and Lady for life regardless of what they do.

Home Secretary ... Jacqui Smith

Look at Labour's Baroness Uddin and the £100,000 she's claimed on an empty flat.

She was a local councillor and Tony Blair crony whom he put in the Lords after she failed to be picked as a Labour candidate.

She lives in a taxpayer-subsidised east London house while claiming her main home is a flat in Kent.

Except that until rumbled by The Sunday Times she appears never to have lived in the Kent property.

But by registering her main home as outside London, she qualifies for lavish Lords allowances. When she realised reporters were on her tail, she dashed over to the Kent property - where neighbours had never once set eyes on her - and furniture and workmen started arriving in a frenzy of activity.

"Lady" Uddin makes £29,000 a year like this. Along with other goodies like free food and free travel, she's had £359,000 from us between 2001 and this year.

She swans around the deprived streets of Tower Hamlets - one of Britain's poorest boroughs - in a flash BMW 4x4 for which the list price new is almost £60,000.

These allowances are a gigantic scam. How do Labour expect to stop benefit fraud on poor estates when their own representatives are up to their ermined ears in fraud?

If it is a crime for a jobless brickie to fiddle housing benefit, then it should be an even greater crime for a Lord or Lady to be chiselling the taxpayer. Labour don't realise the extent of public anger over the Westminster gravy train. Tell you what, "Lady" Uddin. You insist the Kent address is your main home even though nobody has ever seen you there.

Prove it by letting us see your utility and council tax bills from that address. And if it's your main home, how come you aren't registered to vote there?

Her "Ladyship" is not alone in her ducking and diving. It's par for the course at Westminster. We need a House of Lords to keep the Commons in check. Those in it ought to command respect.

But Labour have stuffed it with duds and crawlers who see their titles as official permission to rob the taxpayer.

I bet you once Labour lose the election, we'll see "Lady" Jacqui Smith and "Lord" Prescott lapping up the cream.

Fraud has become so institutionalised under Labour that peers and ministers don't see these scams as a crime, just their "entitlement".

A police and Parliamentary investigation has been demanded into "Lady" Uddin's allowances.

If it turns out that the Kent address has not been her main home she should hand the money back and suffer the same indignity as Lester Piggott by losing her title and paying the price in prison.

But I fear it's a racing certainty that won't happen.

DO you agree with Fergus? Have your say below.