Conservative peer Lord Farmer says £300-a-day House of Lords allowance is 'inadequate'

Lord Farmer is reportedly worth over £150 million

Lord Farmer, Conservative peer (Crown copyright)

A millionaire Conservative Party donor who sits in the House of Lords has said that the allowance of £300 per day in the second chamber is "inadequate."

Lord Farmer, a former hedge fund manger, said that Lords peers deserve more because attending the House "restricts their earning opportunities elsewhere."

The current pay is "modest and even inadequate" compared to how hard peers in the House of Lords work, according to the Times.

Lord Farmer is reportedly worth over £150 million and is thought to have given £6.5 million to the Conservatives.

He said that he "did not need to" claim the allowance offered to peers, saying: "Some depend on the daily allowance to make ends meet because they give so much of their time. If this were made clear to the public, who, of course, pay garage and plumbers' bills per hour, or per day, they might think the daily fee is in fact rather modest, and even inadequate, particularly if they understood there are many peers whose work here restricts their earning opportunities elsewhere."

He also claimed that there could be public backing for even higher allowances if citizens recognised that they are getting "value for money."

He continued: "A highly distorted myth is relentlessly peddled of everyone with their snouts in the trough, greedily pocketing £300 a day for turning up."

Alex Wild, research director at the TaxPayers' Alliance, said: "It would be hard to square David Cameron's commitment to the cost of politics with hiking the tax-free peers' allowance.

"At a time when the government is rightly looking to keep spending down, they need to practise what they preach."