LONDON: Former Labour MP David Chaytor became the first politician to receive a criminal conviction over last year’s parliamentary expenses scandal when he admitted on Friday to fraudulently claiming almost 20,000 pounds.
Chaytor, 61, who had been MP for Bury North, had claimed back money he had paid in rent for houses that were in fact owned by himself and by his mother, and also put in false claims for IT services.
He had previously denied the charges and was due to stand trial at London’s Southwark Crown Court on Monday. But he pleaded guilty to three charges of false accounting at the Old Bailey criminal court on Friday, the Metropolitan Police said. He will be sentenced on Jan. 17.
Chaytor faces a maximum of seven years jail, but is expected to receive a more lenient sentence because of his guilty plea, the Press Association reported. On Wednesday,
the Supreme Court published its reasons for rejecting a claim by Chaytor and two other former MPs that criminal proceedings against them would infringe parliamentary privilege.
At the time the expenses scandal broke last year, Chaytor, MP for Bury North since 1997, apologised “unreservedly” for what he called an “unforgivable error in my accounting procedures”. He referred himself to the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards and was suspended from the Parliamentary Labour Party.
He was charged with criminal offences in February this year. Hundreds of MPs were ordered to repay a total of more than one million pounds in the wake of the expenses scandal which caused widespread anger and a total overhaul of the system.
Newspaper revelations showed MPs had made claims for items ranging from toilet paper to dog food, moat cleaning and ornamental duck houses, tainting members of all major parties.
