MP expenses claims report published

Jun 18 2009

Details of MPs' expenses claims have finally been published by the House of Commons - more than a year after the High Court ordered their publication and weeks after they were leaked to the Daily Telegraph.

Revelations about the claims have forced a series of MPs to announce their resignations in the past month.

Junior Treasury minister Kitty Ussher became the latest scalp on Wednesday night when she quit the Government following allegations that she avoided paying capital gains tax by "flipping" her second home.

Thursday's publication covers printed documents and receipts relating to MPs' claims between 2004/05 and 2007/08 for a series of parliamentary allowances, but with many personal details redacted.

These include claims under the £24,000-a-year Additional Costs Allowance, which reimburses MPs for the cost of having to maintain a second home while serving at Westminster; the £22,000 Incidental Expenses Provision, which pays for running an office; and the £10,400 Communications Allowance, which covers the cost of newsletters and websites to inform constituents about their activities; as well as details of expenditure on stationery and postage.

The expenses claims and supporting receipts published by the Commons authorities feature large blacked out areas where it is not always clear what has been obscured.

There are no addresses for MPs' homes, meaning it would have been virtually impossible to identify so-called flipping, whereby MPs switch the designation of their second properties to maximise their claims.

Also redacted are the names and details of people and companies to whom payments were made using expenses, and correspondence between MPs and the Commons Fees Office has also been removed.

Liberal Democrat treasury spokesman Vince Cable said the heavily censored information had been"compromised".

He said: "Had it not been for the Daily Telegraph a lot of this stuff would not have come out."