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Smith: sorry over expense claims

By Channel 4 News

Updated on 12 October 2009

Former Home Secretary Jacqui Smith apologises in the parliament for wrongly designating a London house she shared with her sister as her main home.

Former Home Secretary Jacqui Smith apologises

The Labour MP also apologised "unreservedly" for claiming the cost of pornographic films on expenses, which she repaid earlier this year when it was disclosed by a tabloid newspaper.
 
Smith was speaking after the publication of an inquiry into her expenses by the parliamentary watchdog.
 
This was launched after it emerged that she had designated a house she shared with her sister as her main home, rather than the house in her Redditch constituency where her husband and children lived.
 
Smith said she accepted the conclusions of the Commissioner for parliamentary standards, John Lyon, and the Committee for Parliamentary Standards, that she should not have named the London home as her main residence.
 
"I accept the committee's conclusions and I therefore apologise to the House," she said. "I also want to say sorry to my constituents. They are my number one priority and for too long this investigation has overshadowed the work that I do for them."
 
Smith pointed out that there was no evidence the taxpayer would be better or worse off if she had done things differently.
 
"On the issue of second home allowances, the Commissioner and the Committee recognise that my London home is indeed a home," she said.
 
"They dismiss the most usually repeated newspaper descriptions of my living arrangements and I welcome this judgment."
 
She added: "Indeed, I spent more nights in London than in Redditch for three of the four years in question.
 
"I have never flipped my designation and I only own one home."
 
Smith designated her London home as her main home in 1999 when she became a minister, which she was obliged to do according to the rules at the time.
 
In 2004, this obligation was removed. Smith continued to nominate her London home as her main home, saying that she spent more time there owing to the pressures of her ministerial job.
 
The committee's report found that Smith had spent more nights in Redditch than London from June 2007, and said she "should have exercised the discretion given in the rules to identify the residence she shared with her family in her constituency as her main home".
 
Although accepting there were mitigating factors, it found she had breached the rules by wrongly designating her main home between 2004 and 2009, and recommended she apologise to the Commons in a personal statement.

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