MPs are claiming 22 per cent MORE in expenses than they did at the height of 2009 scandal with wealthiest Tory spending £17.67 on loo seats and Corbyn shelling out £180 on artwork for his own calendar
- Analysis of figures since the 2009 scandal show expenses continue to rise
- Some increases have been driven by rising staff wages and fewer internships
- Richest MP who owns estate where Pippa Middleton married made loo claims
- Over 10 years 500 MPs have exploited a loophole to get free first-class travel
- It comes as a Tory MP faces a possible jail sentence for fiddling his expenses
Britain's wealthiest MP Richard Benyon billed taxpayers for a £6.80 toilet seat - and then a £10.87 one a month later
MPs are claiming one fifth more on their taxpayer-funded expenses than they did at the height of the 2009 expenses scandal which rocked faith in politicians for a generation, it has emerged.
The latest claims signed off by the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (Ipsa) include £180 spent by Jeremy Corbyn last March on artwork for a 'Jeremy Corbyn MP calendar', and the cost of two replacement toilet seats for the office of Britain's wealthiest MP, Tory Richard Benyon.
The 2009 furore - which unearthed lurid details of MPs 'flipping' their designated second home, and claiming for duck houses and moat cleaning - forced six ministers from office and sent five members of Parliament to jail.
At the nadir of the scandal in February 2010, 389 MPs - more than half the House - were ordered to repay a total of £1.1 million to the Treasury over inappropriate expense claims.
Shamefaced MPs claimed just £86 million in the first year after the scandal, down from £95.6m in the tumultuous 2008/9 financial year, but claims have been creeping up ever since.
Now, driven in part by increased staff costs after minimum wage hikes and the decline of unpaid internships, expenses claims hit £116 million, 22 per cent more than in 2008/9, analysis of Ipsa records by the Sunday Times has revealed.
In the latest round Mr Benyon - who owns the vast Elizabethan country house where Pippa Middleton got married - submitted an expense claims for a £6.80 toilet seat from Wilko in August 2017, and then a month later asked taxpayers to buy another, for £10.87.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn charged £180 to the taxpayer for artwork for his own calendar
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The MP told the Sunday Times both were for his Newbury office, saying: ' I don't claim for any housing expenses or many other costs that I could entirely legitimately claim for.
'I hope you will make that clear. I'm sure your readers don't expect to pay for their office loo seats…'
Jeremy Corbyn's office defended his claim for the consistuency calendar. A spokeswoman said it advertised the Labour leader's surgeries and was useful for constituents. 'It's been produced for many years at a comparable cost,' she added.
The disclosure comes in the week Chris Davies, Conservative MP for Brecon and Radnorshire, pleaded guilty to falsifying expense claims when he split a single bill into two claims in the hope of having them approved.
The Tory MP admitted creating the invoices so that he could split the cost of a set of landscape photographs for his constituency office between two Parliamentary expenses budgets.
Chris Davies MP could lose his seat or even his liberty after admitting falsifying an expense claim in court last week
He faces a fine or even jail time, as well as the threat of being kicked out of parliament if 10 per cent of his constituents sign a petition demanding a by-election.
John O'Connell, chief executive of the TaxPayers' Alliance, told the paper: 'It's deeply disappointing that 10 years on, the overall cost to taxpayers for expenses hasn't come down.
'MPs should remember that every time they opt for first-class travel, or submit an expense claim for something that they really don't need, it's coming out of the pockets of hard-pressed families in their constituencies.'
The Sunday Times' analysis also reveals that despite tightened rules designed to stop first-class travel, MPs have continued to dodge the rules.
According to Ipsa's rules, MPs may buy a ticket of 'any class', but will be only reimbursed only for the cost of an 'economy class ticket available at the time of booking'. That leaves open the loophole that MPs can bok first-class tickets in advance, which compare favourably in price to expensive standard options like an open standard ticket bought shortly before the journey.
In the past decade, 492 MPs have taken advantage of the loophole and enjoyed first-class train travel at the taxpayers' expense.
And of the 32,521 air tickets bought by MPs on expenses since 2010, a quarter (8,212) were business-class flights, the figures reveal, which are not strictly against Ipsa rules.
But it may anger taxpayers and indeed Parliamentary staff, who last month were granted a pay rise of just 1.5 per cent - only half the 2.7 per cent rise received by the MPs for whom they work.
A Rogue's Gallery: the infamous faces and notorious stories of the 2009 MPs Expenses Scandal
It is a decade since the biggest Parliamentary scandal in a generation came to light. Day after day of Daily Telegraph headlines, each more lurid than the last, brought extraordinary news of duck houses, moat cleaning and house flipping and left the public with a new and deeper contempt for politicians.
More than half the members of the House of Commons were ordered to repay money totaling £1.1million, and five MPs went to jail. Ten years on, a few stories still stand out:
Anthony Steen
The Conservative MP for Totnes said he would not stand for re-election after it was revealed in 2009 that he had spent £87,729 in four years towards the upkeep of his £1 million mansion.
Costs passed on to the public purse included tree surgery and a wrought-iron fireplace, but Mr Steen said he did not know 'what the fuss is about'.
He said people were 'jealous' of his 'very, very large house', adding: 'What right does the public have to interfere with my private life? None.'
He was later given a CBE for his work tackling human trafficking.
Anthony Steen was presented with a CBE in 2015 (John Stillwell/PA)
Margaret Moran
The former Luton South MP falsely claimed more than £50,000 in expenses, a jury ruled, but it was unable to find her guilty of the offence as she was deemed not fit to stand trial in 2012.
She previously announced that she was standing down after days of public anger over claims of £22,500 for treating dry rot at her partner's home in Southampton, 100 miles from both her constituency and Westminster.
Moran said the 'understandable public anger' over MPs' expenses had caused her 'great stress' and 'seriously worsened my existing health problem', resulting in her not formally standing trial.
Marion Little
Not an MP, but a senior Conservative Party official, Little was found guilty in January 2019 of falsifying election expenses in a bid to defeat then-Ukip leader Nigel Farage.
The 63-year-old was convicted in the trial of Tory MP Craig Mackinlay, who was acquitted of breaking electoral rules in his 2015 South Thanet campaign against Mr Farage.
Little, who had worked for the party since 1974 and was held in high regard by Tory top brass, was handed a nine-month suspended jail sentence and ordered to pay £5,000 towards the 'very substantial' prosecution costs.
Marion Little arrives at Westminster Magistrates´ Court in London, where she was convicted of falsifying expenses (Victoria Jones/PA)
Jacqui Smith
The then-home secretary became the first Cabinet casualty of the MPs' expenses scandal, after it was revealed she told prime minister Gordon Brown within days of revelations about her finances that she wanted to quit the government in a reshuffle.
Sources close to Ms Smith said she was so hurt by the revelations in March 2009 – including the humiliation of repaying the £10 her husband, Richard Timney, who worked as her assistant, claimed for watching two adult films – that she told Mr Brown just days later that she wanted to quit.
Ms Smith was also criticised for claiming that her main residence was a rented room in the property she shared with her sister, allowing her to claim the second home allowance on the family home in Redditch, Worcestershire.
Former home secretary Jacqui Smith filed an expenses claim for pornography (David Jones/PA)
David Chaytor, Elliot Morley and Eric Illsley
The trio were landed with massive bills to repay legal aid and prosecution costs in 2011 following their convictions for fiddling their expenses.
A judge at Southwark Crown Court ordered that Chaytor, former MP for Bury North, and Morley, a former environment minister and ex-Scunthorpe MP, should each pay prosecution costs of £23,176, with Illsley, ex-MP for Barnsley Central, ordered to pay £12,178.
Morley, 59, was ordered to pay £33,005 legal aid costs, with Chaytor told to pay £23,036 and Illsley, 56, £10,909.
No orders were made against Jim Devine, former Labour MP for Livingston, after the court was told that he was bankrupt.
All four received jail terms relating to expenses fraud.
Lord Hanningfield
The life peer and former Tory member was jailed for expenses fraud in 2011.
He was later accused of wrongly claiming around £3,300 in expenses in 2013, but was cleared after Parliament intervened.
He later told a newspaper: 'People are making a mountain out of a molehill. I may have made a mistake in the past but I am still being penalised for it.'
Sir Peter Viggers filed an expenses claim for a duck house (Stephen Kelly/PA)
Sir Peter Viggers
The MP for Gosport's bill for a floating duck house became a symbol of the 2009 scandal and forced him to end his Commons career.
The Tory grandee claimed £1,645 for the item, which appeared as a 'pond feature' on his list of expenses. It was disallowed by the Fees Office.
Douglas Hogg
The Tory former Cabinet minister, whose bill for moat-clearing was seen as another example of absurd greed, switched the designation of his second home in 2008 from his Lincolnshire manor house to a property in London.
In addition to what he described as 'core expenses' of £1,091.42 a month – including £759 service charges and £40 a week for cleaning – he put in a series of claims for household items.
These included £20 for a toaster, £19 for low-energy lightbulbs, £4.99 for weedkiller, and £2.99 for refuse bags.
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