Labour's Lord Clarke ordered to apologise over false expenses claim

A Labour peer was today ordered to make a personal apology to the House of Lords for filing a false expenses claim. The subcommittee on Lords' interests said Lord Clarke of Hampstead must make a personal statement in parliament after he admitted claiming overnight allowances for staying in London when he had actually been at his home in St Albans. The admission last May, which followed a Sunday Times investigation into his affairs , prompted a police inquiry. The Crown Prosecution Service concluded in February that it had "insufficient evidence" to bring charges against him. The end of the police investigation paved the way for the subcommittee on Lords' interests to conduct its own inquiry, the results of which were published today . Clarke referred himself to the clerk of the parliaments for investigation after the Sunday Times article and a member of the public subsequently made a complaint against the peer, who is a former chairman of the Labour party. In a letter sent to the subcommittee in February, Clarke acknowledged that "on some occasions I claimed night subsistence on days when I returned to my main residence ... between sittings". He voluntarily repaid £9,190 in respect of the claims. The subcommittee noted that while Clarke had repaid the claims and "did initially admit his misconduct and apologise to the house, in his correspondence he stepped back from this position, asserting that he 'made the claims, believing [he] was entitled to do so'." It ordered him to "make a further personal statement to the house to apologise without reservation for his misuse of the members' reimbursement scheme". With respect to a second allegation, that Clarke had claimed the maximum available amount of night subsistence when he had not incurred that much expense, the subcommittee found "significant mitigating factors" and said therefore he was not "personally culpable". Clarke started his career as a telegraph boy and postman before working for the Union of Postal Workers, becoming deputy general secretary in the 1980s. He was a member of Labour's national executive committee and served as chairman of the party in the early 1990s. The director of public prosecutions, Keir Starmer, said in February there was "insufficient evidence to provide a realistic prospect of a conviction" in the case of Clarke, taking the unusual step of naming someone who had been under investigation "in view of the considerable public interest".