LORD Elder has apologised for breaching the code of conduct on peers' behaviour.
A watchdog found the Labour peer had incorrectly registered money from the Dundee-based Al Maktoum Institute for Arabic and Islamic Studies as a non-financial interest instead of remunerated employment.
He was also found to have improperly used a House of Lords envelope for non-parliamentary business by the independent Lords Commissioner for Standards, Paul Kernaghan
The complaint was made by the former principal of the institute, who said the envelope was used to send him a letter informing him of his dismissal.
The institute said Lord Elder had been its chancellor since 2004 and had received an annual "honorarium" of £5000 a year since 2008 to cover expenses.
The peer said he had never regarded this money as "either remuneration or taxable income".
He accepted he should not have used the House of Lords envelope, but "had no other envelope to hand" at the time.
It came as the House of Lords standards watchdog also upheld a complaint against Foreign Office Minister Baroness Warsi over her failure to register rental income.
The peer – formerly co-chairman of the Conservative Party – has also accepted the finding and apologised, and the matter is now regarded as closed.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article