Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
Analysis finds 169 peers working as advisers and 15 paid by foreign governments
One in five members of the House of Lords are working as consultants or advisers to private businesses at the same time as serving in parliament, the Guardian can reveal.
An analysis of the Register of Lords’ Interests shows 169 peers reported working as advisers earlier this year,with more than a dozen registering that they were also paid by foreign governments on top of the expenses they are entitled to as peers.
A Labour peer claimed almost £50,000 in attendance and travel expenses covering every single day the House of Lords was sitting last year, despite never speaking or asking any written questions, a Guardian investigation reveals.
The former trade union general secretary David Brookman was among dozens of other lords and baronesses who never took part in a single debate, while almost a third of the 800 peers barely participated in parliamentary business over a 12-month period despite costing almost £3.2m in allowances.
Rolling coverage of the day’s political developments as they happen
That’s all from us for this evening. Thanks for reading and commenting. For a summary of the day’s major events, click here.
And, if you’d like to read more on the Brexit negotiations between the government and the opposition, my colleagues Rowena Mason and Heather Stewart have the story:
- The government are defeated on Labour’s amendment 13 in the House of Lords. The amendment makes it an “objective” of the government during negotiations to pursue a free trade deal allowing the UK to stay “in a customs union” with the EU after Brexit.
- The government was defeated on amendment 12 which called for parliamentary approval of future trade agreements.
Prince Charles has saluted the ”unparalleled bonds” between Britain and Ireland at a time of strained Anglo-Irish relations caused by Brexit.
The Prince of Wales was attending a special St Patrick’s Day dinner at the Irish embassy in London where British and Irish politicians mingled amid continuing uncertainty and recriminations over the Irish border issue in the Brexit withdrawal agreement.
Report finds UK arms ‘highly likely to be cause of significant civilian casualties in Yemen’
The UK is on “the wrong side of the law” by sanctioning arms exports to Saudi Arabia for the war in Yemen and should suspend some of the export licences, an all-party Lords committee has said.
The report by the international relations select committee says ministers are not making independent checks to see if arms supplied by the UK are being used in breach of the law, but is instead relying on inadequate investigations by the Saudis, its allies in the war.