A JUDGE has described security at Parliament as a scandal after hearing how a drunken burglar spent 90 minutes searching House of Lords offices.

Jake Pottle, formerly of Ashburton, was able to get into a building at Old Palace Yard and move from office to office despite triggering a series of alarms which were not acted on.

He cut himself as he broke in through a ground floor window and then left a trail of blood as me moved around. He tried on a suit belonging to one peer and drank a bottle of champagne which he found in another’s office.

Part of the break-in and much of Pottle’s progress inside the building were caught on CCTV but screens were not monitored at the time of the break-in, which happened at 3am on August 25, 2021, during the summer recess.

Pottle is a former mental health patient who travelled from his home in Exeter to London because of a family bereavement.

He was seen on CCTV drinking a bottle of spirits before he climbed a gate to access the basement, from where he shinned up a drainpipe to reach the window which he smashed.

He set off one alarm by breaking the window and another inside the building but neither were investigated by security staff, who apparently assumed they had set off by colleagues.

Judge David Evans criticised the security at the Palace of Westminster when Pottle appeared for sentence at Exeter Crown Court.

He said: ‘There is a greater scandal in this case which is that someone was inside the offices for an hour-and-a-half, triggering alarms, and nobody inside the building responded.

‘The alarms were silenced on the assumption it was other members of staff moving around. It is extraordinary. I imagine someone will have raised this with the contractors responsible for security.’

He told Pottle: ‘You spent a considerable amount of time in the building and behaved erratically and irrationally, picking up and moving things, putting on a suit and picking up and drinking a bottle of champagne.

‘Your intention was to steal but, in the event, you did not take anything of significance. What is more significant is that you roamed freely through the building for an hour-and a-half and nobody from security attended.

‘The blood you left all over the place clearly told its own story. This was clearly a sensitive site, but that does not aggravate your case.’

Pottle, aged 27, of Alphington Road, Exeter, and formerly of Cooks Close, Ashburton and Langdon Hospital, Dawlish, admitted burglary and was ordered to do 20 days of rehabilitation activities as part of a one year community order and to pay £900 compensation.

Miss Victoria Bastock, prosecuting, said staff at Old Palace Yard realised there had been a burglary when they found the front door wedged open with a sanitiser stand. CCTV showed Pottle arriving outside the entrance at 3am and trying the door before climbing a gate to the basement.

Scuff marks showed he had climbed a drainpipe and then smashed a window where he cut his hand, which bled and left a trail which showed he had entered a series of offices. He was seen in Parliament Square at 5 pm after leaving the building.

He was traced by DNA from the blood which was found on a number of smashed windows. In all, he did £983 damage.

Mr Peter Coombe, defending, asked the judge to follow the recommendation of a probation report which highlighted his history of paranoid schizophrenia but said he had made great progress in the past year.