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“Tainted” expenses claims made public

LONDON: The U.K. government was on Thursday forced to release expenses details of all the 600-odd MPs following allegations of widespread abuse of the rules that allow out-of-London members to claim up to £22,000 a year to maintain a “second” home in the capital.

The move came as one more Minister, Treasury Minister Kitty Ussher, resigned after being accused of playing the system to avoid paying tax on the sale of one of her homes.

Ms. Ussher, who had been in her job for barely ten days, is the latest casualty of the long-running expenses scandal which has already claimed more than half a dozen ministerial scalps.

A number of high-profile MPs tainted by allegations of misusing the expenses system have announced they would not contest the next election.

The long-awaited release of the MPs’ claims receipts was overshadowed by the news that Tory leader David Cameron would be paying back more than £900 that he had “wrongly claimed” joining a long list of Ministers and MPs who have been forced to pay back money after The Telegraph newspaper published details of their “excess” claims.

The official list, which relates to expenses for the past four years, is a censored version of the original receipts submitted by MPs with key details such as members’ addresses blacked out on grounds of privacy and security. Censored details reportedly include Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s claim for his Sky television subscription.

Rights campaigners called the list a “substandard version” of the original claims many of which have already been published by The Telegraph which reportedly paid thousands of pounds to obtain them.

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