MPs' expenses are officially published online

Details of MPs' expenses claims have finally been published by the House of Commons. The release of tens of thousands of claim forms and receipts on the Parliament website come more than a year after the High Court ordered their publication and weeks after they were leaked to the Daily Telegraph. But with much of the detail that led to a public outcry blacked out, their publication is likely to lead to demands for greater openness. Revelations about the claims have forced a series of MPs to announce their resignations in the past month. Junior Treasury minister Kitty Ussher became the latest scalp on Wednesday night when she quit the Government following allegations that she avoided paying capital gains tax by "flipping" her second home. In a letter to Gordon Brown, the Burnley MP said she had not abused the expenses system, but did not want to cause "any embarrassment" to the Prime Minister or his Government. The publication covers printed documents and receipts relating to MPs' claims between 2004/05 and 2007/08 for a series of parliamentary allowances, but with many personal details edited out. These include claims under the £24,000-a-year Additional Costs Allowance, which reimburses MPs for the cost of having to maintain a second home while serving at Westminster; the £22,000 Incidental Expenses Provision, which pays for running an office; and the £10,400 Communications Allowance, which covers the cost of newsletters and websites to inform constituents about their activities; as well as details of expenditure on stationery and postage. The expenses claims and supporting receipts published by the Commons authorities feature large blacked out areas where it is not always clear what has been obscured. There are no addresses for MPs' homes, meaning it would have been virtually impossible to identify so-called flipping, whereby MPs switch the designation of their second properties to maximise their claims. Also edited out are the names and details of people and companies to whom payments were made using expenses. Correspondence between MPs and the Commons Fees Office has also been removed.

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ITN | June 18, 2009

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