Lord Hanningfield, who has died aged 84, was an Essex pig farmer who, as leader of his county council for a decade, became one of the most influential figures in English local government, and later a Conservative front-bencher in the Lords. (Daily Telegraph obituary)
His career crashed in 2011 when he was jailed for nine months for overclaiming £13,379 in parliamentary allowances. He had claimed between 2006 and 2009 for nights when he had not stayed in London, others when the Lords had not been sitting, and one when he had been on a flight to India.
While Hanningfield also spent lavishly on county business – running up £286,000 on his council credit card in five years – a police investigation found no evidence there of fraud.
His misdeeds came to light in the wake of The Daily Telegraph’s exposure in 2009 of MPs’ abuse of parliamentary expenses. Indeed, he was tried alongside three Labour MPs: David Chaytor, Jim Devine and Eliot Morley.
Eventually found to have overclaimed £30,254, Hanningfield told the court he had regarded the sums as a “living-out-of-London allowance” rather than overnight subsistence. “No one ever told me those forms were so important. I’m horrified to be here now because of them.”
He insisted he had “done the same as 600 other peers” and had been singled out (Lord Taylor of Warwick, a fellow Tory, was the only other peer imprisoned over expenses). He claimed that Bob Russell, Lib Dem MP for Colchester, had reported him after they argued over the future of a local school.
The irony was that Hanningfield lived a simple life. At the time of his disgrace he was living in a bungalow on a small agricultural pension, selling land behind it to pay his legal bills. He paid his research assistant out of his own pocket, had never got round to claiming his local government pension, and had a cigar tin full of receipts for which he had not sought reimbursement.
Despite this apparent unworldliness, he had worked his way up over four decades to become an effective and respected leader of his council. Months before he was charged with fraud, he had concluded an outsourcing deal with IBM projected to save the council £240 million per year.
...In 1998 he became leader of the council, and William Hague had him made a life peer; Hanningfield served in turn as a whip and a spokesman on education and transport. In 2005 a parliamentary question from him revealed that Tony Blair had spent £1,800 of public money over eight years on cosmetics and make-up artists.
Under Hanningfield’s leadership Essex drove down costs and stayed financially sound despite the global financial crisis that broke in 2007. Colleagues and staff knew he was conducting council business in style, but he retained their confidence until his parliamentary expenses were revealed.
In February 2010 he was charged on six counts of false accounting. David Cameron withdrew the Conservative whip from him and he stood down as council leader. His successor, Peter Martin, praised his stewardship but took steps to tighten the council’s “governance framework”. Hanningfield resigned his seat just before his trial.
He was released with a tag in September 2011, having served nine weeks of his sentence. Days later, Essex police arrested him again over his council expenses, holding him for eight hours. No charges were brought, and Hanningfield won £3,500 damages for wrongful arrest.
Suspended by the Lords until April 2012, he spoke in October 2013 for the first time since his imprisonment, criticising train services in Essex but welcoming plans for a new station outside Chelmsford. After media reports that he had been claiming his £300-a-day attendance allowance but staying less than 40 minutes, he was suspended in May 2014 for a further year.
Hanningfield was leader of the Association of County Councils from 1995 to 1997; chairman of the Council of Local Education Authorities from 1990 to 1992; deputy chairman of the Local Government Association from 1997 to 2001; a vice-president of the EU’s Committee of the Regions; and a member of the court of Essex University. He was appointed deputy lieutenant for Essex in 1991.
Paul White never married. He told his trial he “wouldn’t survive” without Jefferson, his Bernese mountain dog.
Paul Edward Winston White, Lord Hanningfield, born September 16 1940, died October 20 2024
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