Illsley Quits UK Parliament After Pleading Guilty to Fraud - BusinessWeek

January 12, 2011, 11:04 AM EST

By Robert Hutton and Kitty Donaldson

Jan. 12 (Bloomberg) -- Eric Illsley became the first British lawmaker since 1976 to quit his seat over a criminal offense after he pled guilty to false accounting in connection with his expenses.

"I would like to apologize to my constituents, family and friends, following my court appearance, for the distress and embarrassment caused by my actions that I deeply, deeply regret," Illsley said in a statement issued to the Press Association news agency today. "I have begun to wind down my parliamentary office, following which I will resign from Parliament before my next court appearance. I will be making no further comment."

Illsley, 55, appeared at a court in London yesterday. He was the second Labour Party lawmaker to plead guilty in the expenses scandal that swept Parliament in 2009, tainting members of all parties at every level. He's the only sitting member to have faced charges.

The resignation will trigger a special election in Illsley's Barnsley Central seat in northern England. The seat is one of Labour's safest, with Illsley getting 47 percent of the vote at May's general election, 30 percentage points more than his nearest rival.

Illsley pleaded guilty to three counts of false accounting for wrongly claiming expenses totaling 14,500 pounds ($22,500) related to local-authority tax, service costs, repairs, insurance and utilities for his second home in London. Judge John Saunders said he would sentence Illsley at a later date to give his lawyer time to prepare.

Lost Seats

The lawmaker didn't respond to calls to his office or mobile phone today.

Five men lost their Commons seats in the 20th century over criminal convictions, most recently John Stonehouse. He was a former Labour aviation minister who was convicted of fraud in 1976 after faking his own death two years earlier by leaving his clothes on a Miami beach and fleeing to Australia with his mistress.

Police in Australia were alerted to Stonehouse's suspicious behavior and thought he might be Richard Lucan, a British earl who had disappeared the previous month after apparently murdering his children's nanny. Files released by the National Archives at the end of last year revealed the British government learned in 1980 that Stonehouse had also acted as a Czechoslovak spy during his time as a minister.

--Editors: Andrew Atkinson, Tony Aarons

To contact the reporters on this story: Robert Hutton in London at rhutton1@bloomberg.net; Kitty Donaldson in London at kdonaldson1@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editor responsible for this story: James Hertling at jhertling@bloomberg.net.