MPs ordered to repay £1.1m in expenses
Updated on 04 February 2010
The Legg report into Commons expenses recommends more than half of all MPs should repay a total of £1.12m, and attacks the system as "deeply flawed".
The report by independent auditor Sir Thomas Legg suggested 390 MPs should repay £1.3m that they had claimed in second home expenses since 2004.
That figure was reduced by £185,000 to £1.12m after the former judge Sir Paul Kennedy upheld a number of appeals by MPs against the repayment demands.
Sir Thomas said almost £800,000 had been repaid to the taxpayer since April last year.
In his executive summary, Sir Thomas said the "rules were vague, and MPs were themselves self-certifying as to the propriety of their use of the allowance". And he called the system "deeply flawed".
There was also a "prevailing lack of transparency" and officials had a "culture of deference" to MPs.
Biggest bills
Labour MP Barbara Follett faced the highest single repayment demand, a total of £42,458.
Conservatives Bernard Jenkin and Andrew Mackay must each pay more than £30,000.
That is a reduction for Mr Jenkin, who was initially ordered to repay some £63,000 which he had claimed to rent his second home from his sister in law.
Mr MacKay's wife Julie Kirkbride must also repay a considerable sum, totalling about £60,000 between the couple. They owned two properties - and each of them claimed a different place as their second home, leaving no main residence which wasn't funded by the taxpayer.
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Gordon Brown had fully supported the enquiry, and had paid back what he was told to, as quickly as possible. In fact the details show Mr Brown was so keen to repay - he handed back £13, 723 - that's a fair bit more than the £12,888 which he was asked for, to cover claims for cleaning, decoration and gardening costs.
As for the other party leaders - David Cameron returned a total of £965 to cover overpaid mortgage interest - while Nick Clegg repaid around £990 in gardening costs, both amounts appear to be more than they were asked for.
While former Tory cabinet minister Peter Lilley, who'd been asked to repay £41,057 over a loan for his second home reduced to nothing.
He had argued the loan hadn't amounted to a second mortgage, which wouldn't have been allowed.
Former judge Sir Paul Kennedy, who was asked by the government to hear the 75 appeals - said Mr Lilley's evidence had been 'compelling'.
He used the foreword to his own report, also published this morning, to criticise the methods used by Sir Thomas in his audit.
Sir Paul said he was "particularly troubled" that MPs who had not broken rules that were in place at the time had been accused of making "tainted" claims or having "breached the requirement of propriety".
"A particular challenge has proved to be the widespread lack of proper evidence on the record from MPs to support substantial payments, especially of mortgage interest, even though this was expressly required by the rules," he added.
The Legg review was ordered by Gordon Brown in May in an attempt to draw a line under the damaging expenses scandal in which it emerged some MPs had claimed for duck houses, chandeliers and massage chairs.
The backlash against the audit process has been growing since the autumn, when Sir Thomas sent letters to hundreds of MPs spelling out how much he expected them to repay.
Many were angry that he had imposed limits for reasonable expenditure on items such as gardening and cleaning, even though none existed at the time.
But today Gordon Brown was said to see it all as part of a wider process of restoring trust in Parliament - and how Britain's politican institutions operate in future.
