Lord Taylor of Warwick: "I have a role to play in House of Lords"

Lord Taylor of Warwick: "I have a role to play in House of Lords"

When a Chinese takeaway arrived last month, Lord Taylor of Warwick was officially advised that he should allow only his arms to leave his home to collect the food, or risk breaching his curfew.

Imprisoned earlier this year for defrauding the parliamentary expenses system, the peer must still wear an electronic tag around his ankle, meaning his legs are forbidden from leaving his house after 7.15pm.

However, despite facing several more weeks of effective house arrest, Taylor is determined to make a political comeback. Next May, he is planning to walk back into the House of Lords, take his seat on the red benches, and use his time in prison to inform debate.

Peers are currently powerless to block Taylor’s controversial return, much to the annoyance of some of his colleagues.

“Well I have been punished,” he said. “What I would say is that Parliament should be reflective of society. I have a role to play, something to contribute.

“I’m sure there will be critics who will say, 'How dare he show his face again in the House of Lords’. But when there is a debate about prison reform most of them will be talking from theory, I’ll be talking from practice.”

Taylor, a former barrister and judge who was one of the first black members of the Lords, claimed thousands of pounds in taxpayer-funded expenses after declaring that his nephew’s house in Oxford was his “main residence” – which then allowed him to receive an overnight allowance for peers who live outside London. He also claimed expenses for travelling to Oxford.

However, he had never stayed in Oxford, residing instead at his home in Ealing, West London, and was criticised by the judge for “a protracted course of dishonesty”.

He has repaid in full the wrongly claimed expenses.

Today, the disgraced peer becomes the first of the six politicians who were imprisoned in the wake of the expenses scandal to publicly discuss his incarceration.

“Wandsworth Prison is not a holiday camp. I wouldn’t recommend it,” he said. “When I was being led in to the sweat box [the cell in the prison van] there was a black jailer who was putting me in and he looked at me and recognised me and his eyes were just moist and he said, 'No man, this is not for you’. I think he felt worse than I did.

“As we were driving into Wandsworth Prison, on the radio, Madonna was singing have a happy holiday. And I thought, 'You must be joking’.

“You get checked in, you are strip searched basically.

“I remember as they looked at each item, 'No you can’t have that, yes you can have that’, then they put this book out, 'What’s this then, what’s all this then?’ And I said, 'It’s my Bible’. 'Can he have the Bible guv’nor?’ …I thought, 'This is surreal’.

“You are put into prison clothes, I wouldn’t say they were Versace. You’ve got a choice of grey or grey.”

Taylor said that he decided not to opt to be held in a segregated wing of the prison – but instead decided to spend his time alongside “normal” prisoners.

However, to his surprise, his cellmate was not a murderer, drug dealer or mugger but another expenses cheat – the Labour MP Elliot Morley (who claimed for a

so-called phantom mortgage).

The men were to spend only four days together at Wandsworth Prison but quickly developed a close bond.

“I think the prison officers were quite amused by that,” he said. “They said they’ve got a special cell ready for me.

“And actually Elliot and I got on extremely well. No problems at all.

“We didn’t discuss our crimes in detail but we did discuss… it was more emotions, how we were feeling. I seem to remember that Elliot didn’t have a watch so he relied on me to tell him what the time was. It’s the simple things that count.

“The mirror in the cell was plastic, it was so scratched you can’t see yourself. So all I could see was a kind of brown blob. So the first morning shaving was an experience. I came out looking like I’d been in the ring with George Foreman. But you soon get used to it.”

Taylor, once he had got used to the showers working for only 10 seconds at a time, said he was “surprised” by the welcoming reception he received from other prisoners. He only recounts one unpleasant incident, when he was threatened by a 6ft 4in Panamanian, who, he was repeatedly warned, “wanted to cut me up”. He managed to defuse the situation with a joke.

As a former lawyer and judge, he soon took up an unofficial role as the in-house prison lawyer, helping his fellow inmates to draft letters and offering them help on potential appeals.

After a month in the Category B Wandsworth Prison, he was moved to Stamford Hill, an open prison – where he was soon handed a less intellectually demanding job.

“At Stamford Hill, I was a toilet cleaner, quite proud. One of the most important jobs in the prison. I kept those toilets pretty clean. I got on with it. I had no issue with doing that.”

In the past, politicians who have been shamed and sent to prison have often disappeared quietly into political obscurity. The other expenses cheats have been barred from their parties and ejected from the House of Commons.

However, official rules currently prevent the barring of Taylor from the House of Lords and he insisted that he had paid his price – and had important views on prison reform that will make him a valuable resource in the debate on the subject.

“The luxury at Wandsworth is the exercise period,” he said. “You are in your cell for 22 and a half hours a day. If it’s not raining you are allowed to go around the exercise yard which is precisely 129 paces. I can tell you that now.

“You literally just walk around it. And I looked around and it was surreal. This is Belsen, this is Victorian. I thought, 'Is this 2011?’

“It’s just the starkness of the whole place. Everything was grey, gloomy. Yes it was summer. It was just the depression. A lot of people were depressed. People’s self-worth goes. I soon realised I had a role to play.”

He says that he wants to campaign to improve literacy in prisons, to ensure that prisoners receive proper education and access to apprenticeships.

“When there is a debate about prison reform most of them [politicians] will be talking from theory, but I’ll be talking from practice … I think I should be judged on that basis.

“I’ve heard the jangling of the keys from the inside. You know, most politicians, yes they’ve visited a prison but they’ve only heard the jangling of the keys from the outside of the door.

“I don’t want to be someone who is seen as an apologist for criminals or offenders but I want to be someone who will say, 'Look there is a better way’. There is a way in which we can reduce offending by making offenders more responsible.”

But does he really think it’s right that he should be able to claim expenses again and receive taxpayer support for his work?

“Well I have been punished. One is surely allowed … David Cameron is always saying that we should be allowed a second chance. I have always been someone who works hard, I want to give my time back to the public again.

“We’re not paid and I’m not suggesting we should be. I want to try and make amends by serving the public.”