An alleged terror group that has been banned in the United Arab Emirates is paying the travel expenses of a member of staff at the House of Lords. Records show Mrs Toni Hayhow-Khan received the money from the Cordoba Foundation, which was banned by the UAE along with groups like Boko Haram and Al-Qaeda.
Mrs Hayhow-Khan works in the office of Baroness Uddin, who was appointed to the House of Lords by the Labour Party in 1998. In 2010 she was thrown out of the party after she was forced to repay £125,000 in expenses she had falsely claimed.
At the time her husband claimed she could not afford to make the payment, but in the end she gave the House of Lords “a lump sum”. It was later shown that she had taken an interest-free loan of £124,000, partly funded by a man linked to the Muslim Brotherhood.
As a member of the House of Lords, Uddin is entitled to take on staff, and give them virtually unfetter access to the Parliamentary estate. Whilst the staff are subject to vetting they are not routinely searched when they enter the Palace of Westminster on a daily basis.
Breitbart London understands Mrs Hayhow-Khan is the sister-in-law of Uddin, and she lives in Frinton, Essex. The register does not state what “travel to parliament” was paid by the Cordoba Foundation for Hayhow-Khan, but an annual rail season ticket from her home to Westminster would cost an eye-watering £6,260.
House of Lords staff are allowed to take payments from outside organisations as long as they are properly registered, and do not represent a conflict of interest. However, the Lords authorities are believed to leave it up to individual peers to decide which organisations are appropriate to take money from.
The Cordoba Foundation strongly denies any connection to violence and rejected the UAE’s designation of it as a terrorist group. When the list was published they described it as “an unprecedented and irresponsible move”.