Lord Hanningfield is a former Conservative spokesman on business A Conservative peer is to appear in court over accusations that he fiddled his parliamentary expenses.
Lord Hanningfield faces six charges of false accounting between March 2006 and May 2009.
They are said to relate to overnight allowances for staying in London when records allegedly showed he was driven to his home near Chelmsford, Essex.
Lord Hanningfield, who will appear at the Old Bailey, is the former leader of Essex County Council.
The charges are expected to be put to to the 70-year-old so he can enter his pleas before Mr Justice Saunders, with a trial due to take place in May.
Lord Hanningfield, who will appear in court under his original name of Paul White, was charged in February last year.
He was suspended from the Parliamentary Conservative Party and stood down as a frontbench business spokesman in the House of Lords and as leader of Essex County Council.
He said at the time that the accommodation claims had been made in good faith.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.