PIO peer quits House of Lords

Jul 08, 2010 - Age Correspondent |

London

Indian-origin Tory peer Lord Raj Bagri has given up his seat in the House of Lords in order to keep his non-domiciled tax status. Lord Bagri is among five peers who resigned from the House of Lords in order to retain their non-dom status.
Conservative peers Lord McAlpine and Lord Laidlaw of Rothiemay and cross-bench peers Baroness Dunn and Lord Norman Foster also have resigned from the House of Lords.
The five peers will no longer be able to attend the Lords or vote on any legislation. However, all five peers will be allowed to keep their titles, the House of Lords said on Wednesday.
The Labour party had introduced changes in the Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill to ban non-domiciled Britons and foreigners living in the UK from donating to political parties. The bill was passed in April and it made it mandatory for the members of both Houses of Parliament to be registered in the UK for tax purposes. The members of the House of Commons and the House of Lords had been given time till midnight on Wednesday to become full residents of the UK for tax purposes.
Seventy-nine-year-old Lord Bagri, who was made a life peer in 1997, was chairman of the London Metal Exchange until 2002. He started work as a 15-year-old apprentice metal trader in Kolkata and moved to Britain when he was 19 years old.

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