Peers' personal expenses rise by a fifth to over £10m a year

Members of the House of Lords have run up a £10m bill for their expenses – an increase of 20 per cent in a year.

And 91 peers claimed more than £30,000 each to cover the cost of travel, meals, accommodation in London and secretarial expenses, new figures have revealed.

The total bill for Lords' expenses over the last financial year was £10.01m, compared with £8.4m the previous year, and now represents around a fifth of the cost of running the second chamber.

The sharp increases follow above-inflation rises in expenses rates after peers, who receive no salary unless they are ministers, protested over their reimbursement.

The biggest rise came in the cost of staying overnight in London, which went up by 27 per cent, from £2.5m to £3.2m. Peers whose main residence is outside London can claim as much as £122 a day when attending the Lords. Secretarial and postage expenses – up to £51 a day – increased from £1.9m to £2.4m. And the bill for peers' daily expenses, which include costs such as taxi fares, rose from £1.8m to £2.3m.

Norman Baker, the Liberal Democrat MP for Lewes, said: "You have to have checks in place to ensure they aren't just signing in for the day and disappearing."

The annual cost of running the Lords is £56.3m.