R v Chaytor

R v Chaytor
Court	Supreme Court of the United Kingdom
Full case name	The Crown against or and (most formally Regina versus) Chaytor and others (Chaytor, Morley and Devine)
Decided	18–19 October 2010, decision pronounced 1 December 2010
Citation	[2010] UKSC 52
Case history
Prior action	[2010] EWCA Crim 1910
Court membership
Judges sitting	Lord Phillips & Lord Rodger (Lords Hope, Brown, Mance, Collins, Kerr and Lady Hale in concurrence), Lord Clarke concurring but with further words about limits of exclusive cognisance, not expressly concurred in by the others
Case opinions
Per curiam (unanimously): Members of Parliament could be prosecuted for false accounting in relation to the parliamentary expenses' scandal (without violating parliamentary privilege)
Keywords
False accounting Constitutional law Parliamentary privilege

R v Chaytor and others [2010] UKSC 52 was a 2010 judgment of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom. The case concerned the trials of three former Members of Parliament for false accounting in relation to the parliamentary expenses scandal of 2009.

During their trials, the three MPs (David Chaytor, Elliot Morley and Jim Devine) had each separately argued unsuccessfully that there was no case to answer as the doctrine of parliamentary privilege covered the expense claims and could not be the basis of criminal charges. They appealed (along with Lord Hanningfield) to the Court of Appeal where three of the most senior judges in that court (Lord Judge LCJ, Lord Neuberger MR and Sir Anthony May – the President of the Queen's Bench Division) had dismissed their arguments.

The MPs (although not Lord Hanningfield) successfully applied to the Supreme Court for permission to appeal the decision. The Supreme Court, comprising nine judges to reflect the importance of the matter, heard arguments over two days in October 2010 before unanimously rejecting the submission that Parliamentary privilege under either the common law or the Bill of Rights 1689 protected the defendants from prosecution.^[1]

As a consequence, each case was referred back to the Crown Court. Chaytor and Morley pleaded guilty to dishonesty offences and Devine was found guilty at trial. Each received sentences of imprisonment between 16 and 18 months in relation to their expenses claims.^[2][3][4]