(2009) Conservative Party M.P. Eleanor Laing -PARASITE

Eleanor Laing, a Conservative front bencher, has admitted that she did not pay capital gains tax when she made £1 million profit on a second home bought with the help of taxpayers’ money.

Mrs Laing, the shadow junior justice minister, claimed more than £80,000 from the public purse towards mortgage interest and service payments on two adjacent flats she bought in Westminster, even though her constituency home is less than an hour’s journey away by Tube.

She was able to claim parliamentary expenses on the flats because she nominated them as her second home, and she reiterated last night that she had “always regarded” the flats as her second home. When she sold the flats last year for £1.8 million, she made at least £1 million profit, which would have left her with a £180,000 capital gains tax bill if she had declared the flats as her second home to HM Revenue & Customs.

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