House of Lords expenses have been left open to abuse and error due to flaws in systems, an internal report has revealed.
Members of the Upper House are paid just over £300 tax-free for every sitting day they attend.
But a report obtained by MailOnline under freedom of information rules warned there was ‘no practical way’ of knowing whether the official attendance record was accurate.
It said House clerks were being left with the ‘challenging’ task of visually identifying which of the 800 peers were in the chamber.
As a result there were ‘unquantifiable’ inaccuracies in the record, which ‘underpins’ the system of allowances in the Lords.
Members of the Upper House (pictured) are paid just over £300 tax-free for every sitting day they attend
Peers are also able to ‘self-certify’ that they have attended sittings once a year, even if there is no evidence that they did.
The Lords authorities insisted there was no evidence of ‘significant or regular’ inaccuracies in the record, and members still needed to sign to say they had been present at Parliament.
But the damning findings will raise fresh questions about the processes in the upper chamber.
There have been repeated…
