Why is fiddling peer Baroness Uddin still in her low-rent flat?

By
Andrew Pierce

Last updated at 8:09 AM on 6th February 2012

Fiddling peer: Baroness Uddin has not faced criminal charges despite being suspended from the Upper House after fraudulently abusing her Parliamentary second home allowance

Fiddling peer: Baroness Uddin has not faced criminal charges despite being suspended from the Upper House after fraudulently abusing her Parliamentary second home allowance

The pariah Fred Goodwin has at last been stripped of his knighthood, but still there is no action against the liars and cheats sitting in the House of Lords.

Take Baroness Uddin, Britain’s first Muslim woman peer. She has not faced criminal charges even though she was suspended from the Upper House for a record 18 months after fraudulently abusing her Parliamentary second home allowance to the tune of £125,000.

She has not repaid a penny and keeps her title. As if that’s not bad enough, I hear she is still living in a three-bedroom housing association property in Tower Hamlets, East London, paying taxpayer-subsidised rent of just £124 a week.

Uddin, who has held highly-paid
directorships on companies such as Carlton Television, claims she can’t
afford to repay the £125,000 even though she owns three properties with
her husband.

Not only did Uddin claim more than £100,000 between 2005 and 2010 by stating her main residence was a small flat in Maidstone, Kent, when in fact it was her Tower Hamlets property, managed by Spitalfields Housing Association, she also claimed mileage to Kent even though neighbours said the flat had never been occupied.

Spitalfields Housing Association, which gets more than £35 million from the taxpayer, provides rents as low as one-sixth of the market rate. The borough has 23,000 people on its housing waiting list.

Legally, a tenant with an assured or secure tenancy must live in social housing as their ‘only or principal home’, so she could have breached her agreement. But because the tenancy is joint with her husband, the housing association says it can’t (or won’t) evict her. It didn’t return my calls.

Peter Golds, the Tory group leader on Tower Hamlets Council, has written to Housing Minister Grant Shapps demanding her eviction. ‘It’s scandalous that a state-funded housing association has not kicked her out,’ he said.’

I couldn’t agree more.

People in green houses…

In a newspaper article, Caroline Lucas, the first Green MP at Westminster, tore into Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls for refusing to commit a Labour government to reversing the coalition’s cuts.

‘His capitulation before the Tory-led coalition’s definition of economic credibility as meaning ever more fiscal austerity, and his jaw-dropping statement that “we are going to have to keep all these cuts” calls into question the very purpose of the Labour Party.’

Rage: Caroline Lucas is furious with Ed Balls for refusing to commit a Labour government to reversing the coalition¿s cuts

Rage: Caroline Lucas is furious with Ed Balls for refusing to commit a Labour government to reversing the coalition¿s cuts

Stirring stuff, but Lucas could also have asked, what is the point of the Green Party? Green-run Brighton City Council is pressing ahead with cuts of £35 million. And Lucas’s constituency? Brighton Pavilion.

The Peel Group, one of the largest property investment companies in the UK, has a mission statement to make the North-west the UK’s leading economic region.

So who better to support an £18,000 appeal for a bronze bust of the great reforming Prime Minister William Gladstone on their land in his hometown of Seaforth, Merseyside?

Brenda Murray, 87, the appeal organiser, said: ‘There is huge interest  in the bust, but Peel Holdings said they could not help. I would have been happy with £1,000.’ Peel’s assets are valued at around £6 billion.

Ed Miliband has become very moralistic over the bonus of RBS chief Stephen Hester, which was in the contract Labour negotiated. Perhaps he could do something about his brother David who has set up a company to exploit a tax loophole and maximise his earnings — almost £500,000 since he lost the leadership contest.

Shortly before the General Election, Chris Huhne shared a platform with Baroness Warsi, the Tory chairman, when she urged Labour ministers to forego rights to severance pay if they lost.

As Huhne raised no objection to that, is it safe to assume he will not take his £17,200 for being a Cabinet minister for almost two years?

Huhne, who only narrowly lost the Lib Dem leadership to Nick Clegg in 2007, was not only unpopular with Tories. He was falling out of favour with his own party activists, too.

A survey for the Lib Dem Voice website put his satisfaction rating at 28 per cent, down from 68 per cent last November when he was the most popular Lib Dem Cabinet minister.

On your marks, Widders!

Shows like Strictly Come Dancing exploit older women like Ann Widdecombe as ‘figures of fun’, a BBC-commissioned report concluded last week. Ridiculous. Widders loved every minute of it and the work hasn’t stopped pouring in.

And here’s a thought. Now Alesha Dixon is off to The X Factor, why not replace her with Widders? Neither is professionally qualified to judge dancing. But Widders knows all about entertainment.

Here’s what other readers have said. Why not add your thoughts,
or debate this issue live on our message boards.

The comments below have not been moderated.

People like her are simply serving to discredit the entire institution, once discredited it’s easy to get rid of it. But it will be replaced by 600/700 people motivated by self interest, self advancement and money making and not the stability of the nation, as our previous House provided. We’re set to throw the baby out with the bathwater. No society can function without structure and hierachy, but without merit, logic or practicality it’s just a big squalid mess.

Just plain disgusting but one good thing all this publicity she has from her wrong doings will shun her from the upper society regardless to her title. No good being Baroness if you cannot mix with the others! That is the only joy I have as for everything else related to the Government disgusting activities never pay back to society in full.

As the first femail muslim peer Baroness Uddin has shamed her religion. There are people in this country who look for every opportunity to undermine our multicultural society. She has only helped their cause.

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