The Hon. Douglas Hogg was elected as a Member of Parliament at the
1979 general election for the
Lincolnshire seat of
Grantham, following the retirement of the sitting Conservative MP
Joseph Godber. The Grantham seat was abolished at the
1997 general election; however, Hogg stood and was returned as MP for
Sleaford and North Hykeham in 1997.
In government A few weeks before the murder of Belfast solicitor
Pat Finucane, Hogg, then a junior British minister, stated in Parliament that certain lawyers were "unduly sympathetic to the IRA." In the Stevens Inquiry run by the British state, Hoggs comments in parliament were deemed to have potentially led to the killing of Belfast solicitor Pat Finucane. and remaining in post until the election of
Tony Blair's Labour Government in 1997. On 3 March 1997, a disgruntled farmer from
Anglesey, Louis Hayward, drove six hours from his farm to Kettlethorpe Hall in order to dump three tonnes of pig manure outside Hogg's house. Following the
1997 general election, Hogg was appointed a member of the Home Affairs Select Committee for a year and was a
backbencher Member of Parliament until 2010. The
House of Lords Act 1999 removed the automatic right of
hereditary peers to a seat in the
House of Lords, so when his father died in 2001 (being
heir apparent to the
peerage), he was not required (as would previously have been the case) to resign from the House of Commons and remained an
MP until retiring in 2010.
Stevens Enquiry In the report of his
enquiry concerning collusion in Northern Ireland between loyalist paramilitaries and the security forces, under "Other Matters concerning Collusion", a section of
Sir John Stevens' report reads: :"2.17 My Enquiry team also investigated an allegation that senior
Royal Ulster Constabulary officers briefed the
Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, the Rt Hon Douglas Hogg QC MP, that 'some solicitors were unduly sympathetic to the cause of the IRA'. Mr Hogg repeated this view [their expressed concerns] during a debate on the Prevention of Terrorism legislation in the House of Commons. Within a few weeks
Patrick Finucane was murdered. Mr Hogg's comments about solicitors' support for terrorism made on 17 January 1989 aroused controversy. To the extent that they were based on information passed by the RUC, they were not justifiable and the Enquiry [Inquiry] concludes that the Minister was compromised."
Expenses Hogg claimed near maximum
Additional Costs Allowance in the
2001 and
2005 UK Parliaments. In 2009, during the
row over MPs' expenses,
The Daily Telegraph alleged that Hogg had submitted and was paid a claim form including more than £2,000 for the
moat around his country estate,
Kettlethorpe Hall, to be cleared. The taxpayer helped meet the cost of a full-time housekeeper. Other allegations included expenses for work done to Hogg's stables and for his piano to be tuned. He generously spent or perhaps somewhat overspent on his farm and home office: Hogg agreed a deal with the expenses office simply to have one twelfth of the second homes allowance paid into his bank account every month. In saying that his claims complied with both the spirit and letter of the rules, Hogg said he had issued, in the interests of transparency, full lists of all his expenditure on the property but these were never meant to be the record of a claim. On 14 May, Hogg agreed to repay the £2,200 cost of clearing the moat, after an order from the party leadership. He maintained he had not claimed the money, but agreed it had not been "positively excluded" from paperwork submitted to the Commons Fees Office. Following the scandal, Hogg announced on 19 May 2009 that he would not stand at the following general election. ==House of Lords==