Morley Sentenced to 16 Months

(Posted on 20/05/11)

Saying he had "thrown away his good name and good character", Mr. Justice Saunders sentenced Former Labour Minister Elliott Morley to sixteen months in jail this week.

Morley was accused of taking excessive claims for mortgage costs and then laying claim for at least one mortgage that had already been satisfied. He also stole more than £30,000 in parliamentary expenses. His guilty plea makes him the most senior politician to have ever pled guilty to financial fraud; two of his pleas were under the Theft Act. Initially, Morley said the errors weren't intentional, but had been honest mistakes and that he looked forward to proving his innocence.

The Crown Prosecution Office quickly dismissed that statement and said he'd behaving dishonestly and knew it when he was doing it. Mr. Justice Saunders agreed and said the "excessive claims were made deliberately and are not explicable even in part by oversight". It is believed Morley acted illegally between the years 2004 and 2007. He was accused of providing inaccurate information on at least forty different mortgage documents, submitting "phantom" claims for £16,800 on a property long after it had been paid in full and making highly inflated claims that he was never entitled to.

After saying he'd been a "positive force" otherwise in his career, the judge reminded him of the damage he'd done to his family and victims. Before the scandal broke, Morley had been a respected leader who was committed to the environment and animal rights and who enjoyed birdwatching. He was the driving force behind the government's anti-coastal erosion and decontamination programs. He was also a teacher for more than a decade in the 1970s and 1980s. Morley's guilty plea is the in a series of former Labour MPs caught practicing illegally.