New cabinet expenses leave red faces
Updated on 08 May 2009
The government insists no parliamentary rules were broken as the Daily Telegraph publishes new details of cabinet ministers' expense claims.
Ministers do admit, however, that it is embarrassing to have laid bare how they use taxpayers money to subsidise their lifestyles.
It's the detail they tried to stop you from seeing, published before it was due to be published in full in the summer.
It reveals that:
- Gordon Brown paid his brother Andrew thousands of pounds for a cleaner they shared;
- Communities Secretary Hazel Blears made claims on three different properties in one year, as well as a stay in an exclusive hotel;
- Jack Straw claimed for full payment of council tax when he was actually getting a 50 per cent discount. He later repaid the difference. And,
- Peter Mandelson ran up bills of thousands of pounds for work on his constituency home after he had announced he was stepping down as an MP.
Martin Bell, the former independent MP who ran on a platform of cleaning up politics, talks to Carl Dinnen.
Gary Gibbon reports.
