Housekeeper reveals she was paid £95,000 for her story

THE former housekeeper of the Attorney General Baroness Scotland yesterday said she gave the chief law officer documents to show that she was entitled to work in the UK.

Loloahi Tapui said she showed the chief law officer a CV and payslips, but insisted the minister did not ask her about her immigration status.

The 27-year-old Tongan also said she was paid 95,000 for her story by the Mail on Sunday, with 19,000 commission going to PR guru Max Clifford.

During cross-examination, Judge Nicholas Loraine-Smith asked Tapui: "You took the documents you had along so that you could show her that you were lawfully in the country and you were entitled to work?"

Tapui said: "That's correct."

But then asked by Duncan Penny, prosecuting, whether she agreed that if Lady Scotland believed those documents entitled her to work in the UK then the minister would have been misled, Tapui said: "No".

Tapui should have left the UK in February 2005 but stayed and started work as a cleaner for the Attorney General in January 2009, Southwark Crown Court in London heard.

Tapui, of Sutton Court Road, Chiswick, west London, admits possessing a passport with a counterfeit visa stamp between 7 June 2006 and 19 September 2009, but denies using it to establish facts about herself and earn money.

Tapui said she had got the fake stamp from an unnamed friend of a former Russian housemate called Alex, whom she had paid 180 in cash.

She also denies fraud by dishonestly making a false representation that she was entitled to work in the UK.