Millionaire MP Barbara Follett's £25,000 security expenses
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- ITN
Millionaire MP Barbara Follett's £25,000 security expenses
Tourism minister Barbara Follett has become the latest senior figure dragged into the Commons expenses row after it emerged she has claimed more than £25,000 for security patrols outside her home. The millionaire MP, who is married to best-selling novelist Ken, wanted the protection because she did not feel safe at her London property, according to material leaked to the Daily Telegraph. The total bill for security patrols between 2004 and 2008 was £25,411.64, the paper said. Meanwhile, Commons officials have asked for a police probe into the leaking of MPs' expenses details, a spokesman for the House has said. According to the Telegraph, the receipts show that Prime Minister Gordon Brown paid his brother for cleaning services, and Justice Secretary Jack Straw had to return overpayments for council tax and mortgage bills. Receipts submitted by MPs were due to be published on July 1, after the House of Commons authorities lost a legal battle to keep them secret. Mr Brown was among 13 ministers whose expense claims have been scrutinised by the Telegraph. Receipts submitted by the Prime Minister to parliamentary authorities between 2004 and 2006 disclosed that he paid his brother Andrew - a senior executive at EDF Energy - £6,577 for cleaning services. The Prime Minister's office said he shared a cleaner with his brother and reimbursed him for his share of the costs. It was reported that Mr Straw claimed the full cost of council tax back even though he received a 50 per cent discount from his local authority. He repaid the money last summer, shortly after a High Court ruling requiring the receipts to be published. Mr Straw also repaid money he was overpaid for his mortgage. Mr Straw said he had acted in good faith and within the rules, adding: "I should have paid more attention to this. I didn't. I then caught up with what I had done in error and corrected it." Communities Secretary Hazel Blears reportedly claimed for three different properties in a single year, spending almost £5,000 of taxpayers' money on furniture in three months. Ms Blears told reporters in her Salford constituency: "I have only ever had one small one-bedroom flat in London. I live here in Salford, but to be an MP, I have to have somewhere to live in London." Mr Brown said: "Of course all MPs live in their constituency and in London, there's got to be some allowance for that. "But I've said the system has to change. I've said it's wrong and it should be amended. "We want to abolish the present system and replace it with something different and that's why I made the proposals I did a few days ago." A member of the senior MPs' committee which runs the Commons has claimed that the Telegraph appeared to have obtained the details from a leaker. Reports earlier this year suggested that a computer disc containing the receipts was being offered to the media for £300,000. Sir Stuart Bell, who sits on the House of Commons Commission, said: "If this was received by unauthorised means, it is disgraceful that a national newspaper should stoop so low as to buy information which will be in the public domain in July. "It undermines the very basis of our democracy and is against all the rules of fair play, rewards thieves or leakers of information who may be in breach of contract and does no service to our democracy." Although there is no allegation any of the ministers broke parliamentary rules, the report is certain to raise further concerns over MPs' £24,000-a-year second home allowance. An independent review of MPs' expenses due to report by the end of this year is expected to recommend a thorough overhaul of the system.
ITN | May 8, 2009
