FORMER Essex County Council leader Lord Hanningfield should be suspended from the House of Lords for the remainder of the current parliament over his claims for daily allowances, a committee has said.

The Lords Privileges and Conduct Committee said the peer - who was jailed in 2011 over his parliamentary expenses - should face the maximum sanction after he was found to have claimed the allowance for 11 days on which he did no parliamentary work.

The committee recommended Lord Hanningfield should repay the £3,300 which he had wrongly claimed.

Following a complaint, the Lords Commissioner for Standards, ex-Hampshire chief constable Paul Kernaghan, carried out an inquiry focusing on 11 days in July 2013 when he spent less than 40 minutes in the parliamentary estate.

"Lord Hanningfield was unable to point to any specific work that he had undertaken on the 11 days covered by the commissioner's investigation," the committee said.