The LibDem’s Lord Oakeshott is complaining that Labour peers are ten times more likely than Tories to be coining it on government quangos. Labour has 211 peers after a decade of ermine sales by Sleazy Levy. The Tories have 203 and the LibDems 77 peers. This works out to approximately 1 in 10 Labour peers, 1 in 25 LibDems and 1 in 100 Tory peers in clover.

According to Oakeshott, more than 20 Labour peers are making substantial sums from quango work, 2 Tories are on the gravy train and three LibDems are living it up at the taxpayer’s expense. We are talking six-figure sums here, £600 to £800 a day, with many on over £100,000 a year.

Oakeshott says “Ministers might as well put up an ‘Opposition Peers need not apply’ sign. This is creeping corruption, alongside the shameless sleaze of cash for Labour peerages. New Labour trumpets the need for transparency and diversity. It doesn’t work that way when they hand out jobs to their own Peers.”

Many of the Labour peers who have been appointed to jobs by secretaries of state are former Labour party officials or trade unionists. Baroness Dean of Thornton-le-Fylde, who used to have an official role on Labour’s ruling body, the NEC, now earns £45,802 as chair of an obscure quango which oversees the New Covent Garden Market Flower market. Jobs for the boys and girls…