Even millionaire peers were making claims, Lord Taylor tells expenses trial

A peer charged with fiddling his expenses told a court today that everyone in the House of Lords treated the system as a payment "in lieu of salary".

Lord Taylor said that, in practice, peers claimed "the maximum" they could on parliamentary expenses.

Even the millionaires in the upper chamber submitted claims, he told the jury.

Lord Taylor of Warwick said he had relied on the advice of Lord Colwyn, the long-standing hereditary peer and deputy speaker of the Lords, when submitting his claims.

Even Black Rod had told him that peers and the expenses system just "muddled along", adding: "but it works".

Lord Taylor, 58, the first black Tory peer, was giving evidence in his own defence at Southwark crown court.

He is accused of dishonestly claiming £11,000 in expenses only available to those with their main home outside the capital.

He had named his nephew's house in Oxford as his main home between 2006 and 2007 but never spent a night there. Questioned by Mohammed Khamisa QC, Lord Taylor said that he never hid the fact that he lived in Ealing, and insisted that he had never believed he was breaking the law or doing anything dishonest.

He said Lord Colwyn had told him in 2003 to designate a home outside London connected to his family so he could claim an overnight allowance, adding: "It would be crazy not to." Yesterday Lord Colwyn had told the court he had no memory of ever giving advice. "I am certain that's not correct," he said.

Lord Taylor said he had consulted other peers about expenses when he entered the House of Lords in 1997.

"The general impression that I got was that expenses were not expenses in terms of repayment for things you had paid for, but allowances," he told the jury. "That was very different to the House of Commons, where MPs are paid - in the Lords you are unpaid and I very quickly got the impression that expenses were allowances in lieu of salary. The practice was to claim the maximum.

"Reality is that in terms of expenses you were spending far more than you were able to claim back, so this was a contribution towards your real costs. In reality you were making a loss each time and not a profit, and this was happening regularly. I think some of the millionaires were claiming as well."

He added: "I filled in the expense forms very much in good faith but I was relying on the advice I had been given." Lord Taylor denies six counts of false accounting. The trial continues.