The SNP will lodge a series of amendments to sabotage the House of Lords legislation as Labour’s Bill comes before parliament on Tuesday.
SNP Deputy Leader, Pete Wishart, will lodge an amendment to see the Lord’s abolished entirely, but he will also lodge a further amendment to force peers to pay income tax on their parliamentary pay.
The tax-free pay — currently worth £342 per day — is payable to Members of the House of Lords for any day they turn up in Parliament, even on days where official records show they do no work.
Last year, Lords claimed more than £20 million in attendance allowances — all tax free.
Under their tax-free status, Lords avoided up to £9,066,010.05 in income tax last year, enough to pay the Winter Fuel Payments of more than 22,000 pensioners in Scotland.
In one egregious example, the private healthcare tycoon Lord Hameed of Hampstead, claimed £18,088 in tax-free pay in the 12 months to April 2022, despite there being no record of him doing any work in the House of Lords in that time — having made no speeches, asked no questions, and having failed to even vote once.
Mr Wishart has challenged Labour MPs in Scotland to back his amendments which he says are the “only viable option for anyone who believes in democracy.”
Commenting Mr Wishart said:
“Unlike the Westminster parties, the SNP want the House of Lords abolished – plain and simple.
“There’s no justification for this undemocratic and outdated institution to exist any longer and it’s a complete joke for their members not to pay a single penny of income tax on their salary for simply turning up.
“At the very least Scottish Labour MPs should join me in forcing Lords to cough up and pay tax on their £342 a day pay – that’s the only viable option for anyone who believes in democracy, but if they won’t then they must explain to voters why they believe they should pay tax, but ermine clad Labour big wigs in the Lords shouldn’t.
“The Labour Party has repeatedly broken its promise to abolish the House of Lords for more than a century and, frankly, this embarrassingly limited bill is 114 years too little, too late.
“Voters were promised change, but instead Sir Keir Starmer has ripped up his election pledges, and continued stuffing the Lords with Labour Party donors and cronies as it suits him.
“The undemocratic House of Lords is an archaic institution of the kind you’d find in a banana republic and it’s second-only in size to the Congress of China costing taxpayers more than £200million a year.
“If it was any other country, the government would rightly think it utterly corrupt, but while the Labour Party may have watered down their promises on Lords reform, our values in the SNP remain clear – abolish it and abolish it now.”
