YOUR MPs: what did they claim (From The Northern Echo)

YOUR MPs: what did they claim

7:34pm Thursday 18th June 2009

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THE MAN responsible for setting MPs' pay tonight called for politicians to be given a £10,000 a year pay rise.

On the day the full extent of MPs' lavish expenses were finally revealed, Bill Cockburn, head of the Senior Salaries Review Body, claimed parliamentarians were drastically underpaid.

Despite pay freezes and wage cuts in the private sector MPs received a 2.33% rise in April, taking the annual salary to £64,766.

But Mr Cockburn said that wasn't enough.

"As we have found in the past, in our view MPs’ pay is 10%-15% below what it should be,’’ he said.

His comments are bound to provoke an angry reaction among the public already outraged at MPs' expense claims.

House of Commons officials are already under fire for spending more than £2m to censor sensitive information from expenses.

Critics insisted that the severely-edited disclosure showed the worst abuses at Westminster would never have come to light without a complete version being leaked.

Records of more than a million claims were finally put on the Parliament website shortly before 6am today, after a four-year Freedom of Information battle.

They included a wealth of detail about the ways MPs spend public money - including on odd items such as matches, a milk frother, assertiveness training, and issues of the Racing Post.

Shadow chancellor George Osborne claimed £47 for two DVDs of himself giving a speech on Value for Taxpayers’ Money.

However, the material bore little resemblance to that obtained by the Daily Telegraph, which has seen more than 20 MPs announce their resignation over the past month.

As part of a desperate rearguard action against publication, the Commons had passed a measure exempting their addresses and other ‘‘security-sensitive’’ information.

Huge areas of paper were simply blacked out by officials as a result, meaning many of the dubious tactics exposed by the Telegraph - such as ‘‘flipping’’ second home designation to maximise expenses claims - would have been virtually impossible to detect.

Among the claims by North-East MPs were:

Hilary Armstrong, MP for North West Durham:

* Claimed £3,100 towards the cost of re-pointing the gables and walls at her constituency home in Crook, County Durham; * £705 for a dishwasher for office staff in September 2005. This was reduced to £375 by officials.

Anne McIntosh (Vale of York)

* A £10 claim for mousetraps * A claim for £6.65 worth of Tetley Tea bags in March 2006

Dari Taylor (Stockton South)

* £229.13 and £151.58 for ‘gold crested’ House of Commons greetings cards; * £140 for cleaning, including dry cleaning, and £268 for a replacement dishwasher.

Vera Baird (Redcar)

* £2,009 for work to fit a new boiler, along with £1,031 for a new beech floor and £1,008 for new laminate flooring

Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland)

* £3,035.30 claimed for bathroom items between December 2005 and March 2006. Items included two soap dishes at £25 each and four linen baskets totaling £135; * £300 for portrait photographs in September 2007.

Phil Willis, Harrogate and Knaresborough (Lib Dem)

* March 08- claimed £1700 for decorating new flat * October 07- claimed £130 for bedding

John Cummings, Labour MP for Easington *£1,344 - Decoration - January 08 *£3,220 - Kitchen/gas renewals - May 06 *£2,036 - New gas fire - Feb 06

William Hague (Richmond, North Yorkshire) * £852.60 on national newspapers between January 2007 and February last year; * Monthly claims of about £60 for cleaning

Kevan Jones (North Durham) * £250 for curtains * £796.77 for carpets

Roberta Blackman-Woods (City of Durham) * £1,095 for a sofa bed * £749 for a sofa

Frank Cook MP (Stockton North) * £5,374 + £745 - paid to “Out of Laos” for translation and networking services to pursue his interest in South East Asia * 99p for candles

Iain Wright MP (Hartlepool) * £1,200 for bedding and kitchen equipment

Alan Milburn (Darlington) * MDF Italia kitchen table and bench £1,009

John Greenway (Ryedale) * Under the additional costs allowance he claimed £500 on pot plants and bushes in total

Ashok Kumar (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) * Flat screen TV, an easy chair and a 16ft mast for a flat.

* For more details of what your MP claimed - see tomorrow's Northern Echo.

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