A parliamentary watchdog launched a probe Wednesday into the expenses claims of Britain’s first female Muslim minister Sayeeda Warsi, the head of Prime Minister David Cameron’s Conservative Party. The standards commissioner of parliament’s upper House of Lords is to probe allegations that Warsi, the party’s co-chair, claimed accommodation allowances while staying with a friend rent-free in 2008. Warsi, 41, a Cabinet minister without portfolio, insists she paid Naweed Khan an “appropriate” sum for rent, equivalent to what she would have paid in a hotel, and referred herself to the watchdog last week. But the investigation comes two days after Cameron ordered a separate inquiry into whether Warsi broke rules by taking business partner Abid Hussain on an official visit to Pakistan. Warsi apologised to Cameron on Monday for failing to disclose that she and Hussain were both shareholders in a food company before the 2010 visit.
