(2009) Conservative M.P. Bill Cash

Bill Cash, a senior Conservative MP, claimed more than £15,000 in taxpayer-funded expenses to pay his daughter rent for her London flat – even though he owned a home closer to Westminster.

Mr Cash designated a west London flat owned by his daughter, Laetitia, as his “second home” for parliamentary expenses during 2004 and 2005.

During the period he was renting the flat, Mr Cash owned a flat in Pimlico — a short walk from Parliament.

He said on Thursday that he was not living in the Pimlico property nor renting it out at the time. It was not clear why he did not live in this flat — although he has designated it as his second home since 2005. His main home is a country house in Shropshire.

Shortly after the MP stopped claiming money for his daughter’s flat, Miss Cash, 35, who is hoping to become a Conservative MP and is on David Cameron’s “A list” of preferred candidates, sold the property for a £48,000 profit.

She had owned the apartment for less than a year and a half, and for more than 12 months of that period her father had paid her £1,200 a month in rent from taxpayer funds.

Following the move, Mr Cash, a leading Eurosceptic who has regularly rebelled against the Conservative leadership, nominated two private members’ clubs as his “second home” for a three-month period.

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(2009) Conservative M.P. Anthony Steen

Anthony Steen, a Tory grandee, spent tens of thousands of pounds of taxpayers' money on his million-pound country home, including paying a forestry expert to inspect 500 trees in the grounds, according to a claim he submitted.

Mr Steen, the MP for Totnes in Devon, designated his constituency property as his second home and then claimed the maximum available amount under the Additional Costs Allowance.

Over four years he claimed £87,729, including payments for tree surgery, guarding his shrubs against rabbits, maintaining a separate cottage and overhauling his private sewage system. In January 2005, items on Mr Steen's claim for £13,742 included £2,858.94 for leaking pipes, £1,755.89 for fixing the water supply from the "spring and bore hole'', £1,318 for a wrought iron fireplace and £597.14 for lights.

There was also a £459 charge from a woodland consultant to come and inspect new plantings on Mr Steen's lands. The consultant tagged shrubs and assessed whether there was a need for "additional guarding'' against rabbits.

Another £120 was for "fencing on two fields to the right of the drive leading down to the stables''. A fees officer scrawled on that bill: "I've paid this, should I have?''

Another invoice detailed how a chartered forester, who was a member of the International Dendrology Society, had been employed to carry out a survey of the laurels and rhododendrons. The forester was also hired to "carry out annual maintenance programme to approx 500 trees within the grounds and inspect said trees.''

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(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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(2009) Conservative M.P. Chris Grayling -PARASITE

Chris Grayling, the shadow home secretary claimed thousands of pounds to renovate a flat in central London – bought with a mortgage funded at taxpayers’ expense, even though his constituency home is less than 17 miles from the House of Commons.

Mr Grayling, who represents Epsom and Ewell, lives in a large house in Ashtead, Surrey, but also claims expenses for a flat in Pimlico, near the House of Commons. Mr Grayling also owns other buy-to-let flats and now has four properties within the M25.

The disclosure is particularly embarrassing for the Conservatives as Mr Grayling is the party’s “attack dog” who has criticised a series of Labour ministers implicated in sleaze scandals.

Within weeks of first being elected in 2001, he bought a flat in a six-storey block for £127,000. In 2002, he set up an unusual arrangement with the Parliamentary Fees Office, claiming £625 a month for mortgages on two separate properties, both the main home and the new flat in Pimlico. This is usually against the rules, but Mr Grayling negotiated an agreement because he was unable to obtain a 100% mortgage on the London flat that he had bought.

This arrangement ended in May 2006.

Over the summer of 2005, Mr Grayling undertook a complete refurbishment of the flat. Shortly after the general election in May, Mr Grayling claimed £4,250 for redecorating and £1,561 for a new bathroom.

The next month, he claimed £1,341 for new kitchen units and in July, he claimed a further £1,527 for plumbing and £1,950 for work that included rewiring the flat throughout. It is thought to have risen substantially in value since then.

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(2009) Conservative M.P. Michael Gove -PARASITE

Michael Gove, a front-bench ally of David Cameron, spent thousands on furnishing his London home before “flipping” his Commons allowance to a new property in his Surrey constituency, and claiming £13,000 in moving costs.

Shortly after being elected MP for Surrey Heath in 2005, Mr Gove furnished a house in north Kensington, west London, for which he claimed the Additional Costs Allowance.

Over a five-month period between December 2005, and April 2006, he spent more than £7,000 on the semi-detached house, which Mr Gove, 41, and his wife Sarah Vine, a journalist, bought for £430,000 in 2002. Around a third of the money was spent at Oka, an upmarket interior design company established by Lady Annabel Astor, Mr Cameron’s mother-in-law.

Mr Gove bought a £331 Chinon armchair from there, as well as a Manchu cabinet for £493 and a pair of elephant lamps for £134,50.

He also claimed for a £750 Loire table – although the Commons’ authorities only allowed him to claim £600 – a birch Camargue chair worth £432 and a birdcage coffee table for £238.50. Other claims in the five-month period included Egyptian cotton sheets from the White Company, a £454 dishwasher, a £639 range cooker, a £702 fridge freezer and a £19.99 Kenwood toaster.

Mr Gove even claimed for a £34.99 foam cot mattress in Feb 2006 from Toys 'R’ Us – despite children’s equipment being banned under Commons rules. He also charged the taxpayer for eight coffee spoons and cake forks, worth £5.95 each, four breakfast knives and a woven door mat worth £30. A claim for new patio furniture worth £219, including a four-seater bistro dining set, was turned down by Commons officials.

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(2009) Conservative M.P. Francis Maude -PARASITE

Francis Maude claimed almost £35,000 in two years for mortgage interest payments on a London flat when he owned a house just a few hundred yards away.

The shadow minister for the Cabinet Office owned the house outright but in 2006 took out a £345,000 mortgage on the flat about one minute’s walk away. He then rented out the house and began claiming mortgage interest payments on the flat which is in a grade II listed building with a gym and 24-hour concierge.

Labour ministers Alistair Darling and Hazel Blears have previously claimed for second homes in the same building.

Mr Maude also claimed, and was paid, £387.50 for the cost of moving his effects down the road from the house to the flat.

He claimed £18,112.50 in mortgage interest payments for the year 2006-07, £1,790 for council tax, £2,237 for a service charge and £820 for cleaning.

A further £9,801.78 was claimed for mortgage interest payments from April 1 to Aug 31, 2007.

The senior Tory MP then submitted a claim for the mortgage interest payments for the remainder of the 2007-08 financial year, which came to £13,070.96.

In a note to the House of Commons fees office he said he knew there was not enough left in his ACA account to cover the payments.

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(2009) Conservative M.P. Alan Duncan -PARASITE

Alan Duncan, the senior Conservative MP who oversees the party’s policy on MPs’ expenses, claimed thousands of pounds for his garden – but stopped after agreeing with the fees office that his expenditure “could be considered excessive”.

Mr Duncan’s gardening claims raise serious questions about whether expenses by some MPs can be justified as entirely necessary for their parliamentary work. In a three-year period, he recouped more than £4,000. He has not been asked to repay the money despite later concerns over the garden claims.

The bill for £3,194 for gardening in March 2007 was not paid by the fees office, which wrote to Mr Duncan suggesting that the claim might not be “within the spirit” of the rules.

However, by then the multi-millionaire MP for Rutland and Melton had claimed £4,000 of gardening costs that were approved. In a letter to the MP, the office said that it expected gardening costs “to cover only basic essentials such as grass cutting”. Mr Duncan submitted receipts showing that his gardener was being paid £6 an hour for up to 16 hours a week in grounds of less than an acre.

In March 2007, Mr Duncan claimed £598 to overhaul a ride-on lawn-mower and then a further £41 to fix a puncture a month later.

Mr Duncan also claimed £1,400 a month for his mortgage interest on his home in Rutland. He bought the large detached house without taking out a mortgage on the property itself in January 1992, shortly before he was elected to parliament.

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(2009) Conservative Deputy Mayor Ian Clement -to FACE FRAUD ENQUIRY

Scotland Yard today opened a fraud inquiry into allegations that one of Boris Johnson's key deputies misused his corporate credit card.

Detectives will question Ian Clement over claims revealed by the Standard that he used his City Hall expenses to entertain his 23-year-old lover — but said he was buying meals for Tory councillors. He could face jail if convicted of an offence of fraud or of misconduct in public office.

Mr Clement, 44, dramatically quit on Monday after City Hall admitted there were serious “discrepancies” in his expense claims. Then the Standard revealed how Mr Clement falsely claimed for three restaurant meals he said were with Tory council leaders — all of whom denied being present.

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(2009) Conservative M.P. John Butterfill -PARASITE

Sir John Butterfill built a servants' wing at his country home in Surrey for the gardener and his wife with taxpayers' money.

In the beginning there was the viscount's moat. Then, as the expenses saga developed, there was a floating duck island funded by the taxpayer on behalf of a knight of the shire.

And now, just as the nation was beginning to tire of the great 2009 expenses scandal, we have servants' quarters paid for out of the public purse.

Sir John Butterfill, a Conservative grandee hoping to serve out his last year as the MP for Bournemouth West, Dorset, in some style, was last night having to embark on the rather vulgar business of explaining how the taxpayer paid for an extension which housed the gardener and the gardener's wife.

To the horror of the Tory leadership, which believes the expenses claims of grandees are reviving old stereo-types, Butterfill appeared slightly confused as he explained that today's Daily Telegraph had mistakenly claimed that he had servants. "It is a gross misrepresentation of what I said to the young lady at the Telegraph," he told the BBC Newsnight programme as he denied having built servants' quarters from his parliamentary allowance.

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(2009) Conservative M.P. Bill Wiggins -PARASITE

Bill Wiggin, a Conservative whip, has admitted claiming interest payments for a property with no mortgage for two years, but claims it was a mistake and that he is only "human".

The MP for Leominster, a contemporary of David Cameron at Eton, received more than £11,000 in parliamentary expenses after declaring his constituency property was his second home.

But he and his wife owned outright the £480,000 home near Ledbury in Herefordshire, where he has gone on to breed chickens and prize-winning cattle, and had not taken out a home loan on it.

Mr Wiggin denies that he intended to claim a "phantom mortgage", however, and says he meant to put his £900,000 house in Fulham, west London, as his second home.

But, The Daily Telegraph has disclosed, he submitted expenses claims forms to the Commons fees office for 23 consecutive months on which he had written the Herefordshire address, before officials queried his living arrangements and he changed his designated residence back to London.

In a round of interviews today, Mr Wiggin was forced to admit that he had claimed on the wrong property but said it was an honest mistake. David Cameron, the Conservative leader, agreed but said it was a "bad mistake".

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(2009) Conservative M.P. Peter Viggers -PARASITE

Sir Peter Viggers, a Tory grandee, included with his expense claims the £1,645 cost of a floating duck house in the garden pond at his Hampshire home.

Sir Peter, the MP for Gosport, submitted an invoice for a “Stockholm” duck house to the Commons fees office.

The floating structure, which is almost 5ft high and is designed to provide protection for the birds, is based on an 18th-century building in Sweden. The receipt, from a firm specialising in bird pavilions, said: “Price includes three anchor blocks, duck house and island.”

It was announced last night that following The Daily Telegraph’s disclosures, Sir Peter will retire at the next election.

Sir Peter, a qualified jet pilot, lawyer and banker, has been an MP for 25 years and is a member of the Treasury select committee. He lists his recreations in Who’s Who as opera, travel and trees.

His expenses files reveal that he was paid more than £30,000 of taxpayers’ money for “gardening” over three years, including nearly £500 for 28 tons of manure.

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(2009) Conservative M.P. Jonathan Djanogly -PARASITE

Jonathan Djanogly, the multi-millionaire shadow business minister, claimed almost £5,000 to have automatic gates installed at his large home in his Huntingdon constituency.

The Conservative MP also claimed £13,962 for cleaning and £12,951 for gardening at his second home, which did not have a mortgage, in just four years.

The scale of the claims, which are likely to be regarded as excessive by ordinary taxpayers, is certain to infuriate David Cameron.

The Conservative leader has spent much of the past 10 days attempting to crack down on wealthy Tory MPs who have lavished money on their country homes.

Mr Djanogly is repaying £25,000 to the fees office following discussions earlier this week. In most of his claims, Mr Djanogly charged £65 a week for a cleaner, submitting receipts showing that his monthly staffing bill was up to £1,600 for three staff.

The large wooden gates – which cost £4,936 for installation and maintenance — can be opened automatically by an electronic touchpad from a car.

The MP installed the gates following security fears after he helped constituents threatened by animal rights activists over their links to the animal-testing company Huntingdon Life Sciences.

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(2009) Lib-Lab-Con-men Investigated by Scotland Yard

A small number of MPs and peers will face criminal investigations into allegations they misused their expenses.

Scotland Yard said a joint assessment panel of senior detectives and prosecutors had decided full inquiries were necessary.

The police inquiries were expected to focus on politicians accused of deliberately misleading the authorities or claiming "phantom mortgages".

The investigation will be conducted by officers from the Met's Economic and Specialist Crime Command, overseen by Temporary Assistant Commissioner Janet Williams. It is understood the joint panel of experts will continue to consider a small number of other individuals.

A Metropolitan Police spokesman said: "After consideration by the joint Metropolitan Police and Crown Prosecution Service assessment panel the Met has decided to launch an investigation into the alleged misuse of expenses by a small number of MPs and peers."

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(2009) Conservative M.P. Anne Main

The daughter of Anne Main, a Tory MP, has been living rent-free at a flat paid for by her mother’s taxpayer-funded second home allowances.

Mrs Main, the MP for St Albans, has claimed a 10 per cent second home discount on her council tax for the apartment in her constituency even though her 27-year-old daughter, Claire Tonks, has lived there for up to three years.

This discount can only be claimed if no one lives at the property full-time.

Mrs Main’s principal home is a large detached house in Beaconsfield, Bucks, 25 miles from St Albans. The house is roughly six miles further from Westminster than the St Albans flat. Mrs Main has no regular accommodation in the capital.

The MP charged the taxpayer £1,095.68 a month in mortgage interest payments for the flat, along with service charges, utility bills and furnishing costs. She has claimed a 10 per cent discount on council tax since 2004 — amounting to £171.09 last year — and submitted the bill on her expenses.

Two neighbours who in live in other flats in the building — who the Telegraph spoke to alongside the MP yesterday — both said that it was the first time they had met her.

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(2009) Conservative M.P. Peter Luff THIEF

Peter Luff, a Conservative MP, bought three lavatory seats, three food mixers, two microwaves and 10 sets of bed linen while kitting out his country house and London flat at taxpayers’ expense.

During a four-year period, Peter Luff, the MP for Mid-Worcestershire, spent £17,000 on various items including four beds and mattresses, five tables, two ironing boards, two vacuum cleaners, five sets of towels and three kettles.

In the months before he switched the designation of his second home from Worcester to the capital, he paid for more than £5,000 of decorating and repairs, including the £53.71 cost of having his Aga cooker fixed.

Six months later, he switched his designation to a small flat in south London, where he spent more than £3,000 decorating the bathroom, kitchen, sitting room and hall.

Records seen by The Daily Telegraph show that Mr Luff submitted receipts for furniture and furnishings or decorating bills virtually every month over a four-year period.

Under the rules governing second home expenses, MPs are not allowed to make purchases which would be deemed “extravagant or luxurious”. On virtually each occasion, the House of Commons fees office signed off Mr Luff’s expenses without question, although he did have an £809.91 claim for a television reduced to £750.

In March 2005, he attended a meeting with fees office staff, who told him that his claim for a £1,583 dining room table and chairs was considered excessive. He was paid £750.

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(2009) Conservative M.P. Robert Syms -PARASITE

Robert Syms, a Conservative MP, claimed more than £2,000 worth of furniture on expenses for his designated second home in London, but had it all delivered to his parents’ address in Wiltshire.

Mr Syms, the MP for Poole in Dorset, chose to send a bed, mattress, bedroom furniture, sofa and chair to their home, which is just five miles from his designated main residence in his constituency.

In January 2007, he submitted an expense claim to the fees office that included a £1,379.75 receipt from Beds Direct in Chippenham, and a £677 receipt from DFS in Swindon.

Yesterday, the 52-year-old, who has two children and is divorced, insisted that his actions were above board.

He said: “The reason is that I was a director of a building company in Chippenham and the easiest thing was to get the items shipped to my parents’ address.

“It was stored there and then taken up in a van.

“If I had had it delivered to London, I would have had to spend all the day waiting for a delivery, when obviously I am busy in parliament.

“My parents took delivery and then I took it up to London a week or two later to my second address – I drove the van myself.” Mr Syms was elected as an MP in 1997 and became a frontbench spokesman for environment, transport and the regions in 1999.

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(2009) Conservative M.P. Ed Vaizey -PARASITE

Ed Vaizey, a key ally of David Cameron, had £2,000 worth of furniture delivered to his London home when he was claiming his Commons allowance on a second home in Oxfordshire.

Mr Vaizey also charged more than £10,000 in stamp duty and legal fees to the taxpayer when he moved from rented accommodation to a house he bought in his constituency. Claims submitted by Mr Vaizey, a Conservative culture spokesman, show that his wife Alexandra ordered furniture worth £1,968.45 from the upmarket online retailer Oka in 2007.

Oka was co-founded up 1999 by Lady Annabel Astor, Mr Cameron’s mother-in-law. The shop says on its website that its “extensive furniture range includes painted, rattan, bamboo, sofas, beds, tables, chairs and armoires”.

Receipts submitted by Mr Vaizey show that he ordered a £467 two seat “Hurlingham” sofa and Carmargue chair, worth £544, an “ebony/brown” low table, worth £280.50 and a £671 Dordogne table in February 2007.

The Commons fees office knocked back the claim because the receipt said that the furniture was due to be delivered to the Vaizeys’ home address in west London. An official told Mr Vaizey that his claim was turned down because it “included an invoice from Oka in relation to an address which is different from that nominated as your home”.

The bill was later paid when Mr Vaizey, who entered the House of Commons in 2005, told the fees office that the furniture was intended for his designated second home in his Wantage constituency. He wrote: “I re-attach my claim for furniture as this furniture has been bought for my second home in Wantage.

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(2009) Conservative M.P. James Arbuthnot -PARASITE

James Arbuthnot MP claimed from the public finances for cleaning his swimming pool at a country residence.

The claims by James Arbuthnot were among a series of payments made to maintain a home in Hampshire that he rented before buying a £2 million home without a mortgage two years ago.

Last night, the chairman of the defence select committee said that claiming for the swimming pool maintenance was an error of judgment and that he would return the money.

He was unable to calculate the sum he would repay the fees office. One handwritten invoice for a three-month period, for “grass, strim, pool, fuel” came to £776. Another bill for two months came to £594. The bill for the whole of the 2006-07 financial year for these services was £1,471.

In a letter to the fees office, Mr Arbuthnot acknowledged that his new house was unusually costly to run. He was “well aware” that he quickly spent the additional costs allowance, he wrote, but that was because “[his home] is an expensive house to run”. In June 2007, it took four hours to mow the “main lawn and swimming pool lawn” at a cost of £44.

Email exchanges between the MP and the fees office at this time illustrate the laxity of the fees office in enforcing the rules. Mr Arbuthnot rented a house in a village in Hampshire.

(2009) Conservative M.P. Michael Ancram

Michael Ancram, the former Conservative deputy leader, put the cost of having his swimming pool boiler serviced on his taxpayer-funded parliamentary allowances.

The MP, who is the Marquess of Lothian, submitted claims running to thousands of pounds for gardening and cleaning at his country house, also charging for maintenance at a cottage set in the grounds used by his housekeeper.

After being asked by The Daily Telegraph over the claims, he agreed to repay the £98.58 cost of his swimming pool boiler repair, but insisted that all his other claims were necessary for maintaining his property, saying: “None of the other items were extravagant or luxurious.”

Among the receipts submitted by the MP, who retired to the backbenches after losing the leadership contest to David Cameron in 2005, were payments for “rodent control”, moss removal and the servicing of his Aga oven.

One receipt, issued by a local heating engineer in May 2006, shows that Mr Ancram claimed £90.17 for a boiler service at his “main house,” another £98.58 for the swimming pool boiler, and £72.50 for a third boiler at “Honeysuckle Cottage”.

He converted the cottage for the use of a couple who look after the house when he and his wife are away.

The same month, Mr Ancram asked for reimbursement of £1,117.43 for a gardening bill which included “cleaning up moss etc” on the house in the Vale of Pewsey, Wiltshire.

(2009) Conservative M.P. Brian Binley -PARASITE

A millionaire Conservative MP broke parliamentary rules by claiming more than £50,000 in taxpayer-funded expenses to rent a flat from his own company.

Brian Binley claimed £1,500 a month to rent the flat for more than three years, despite House of Commons rules forbidding MPs from renting properties from themselves or their companies.

The Daily Telegraph can disclose that Mr Binley’s rental claims were first flagged up by parliamentary officials in April 2006, but the payments were not stopped until April of this year.

In 2006, he was told that the claims were not allowed. But he was permitted to continue claiming after appealing to Michael Martin, the Speaker of the House of Commons. Mr Martin only ruled in April 2009 that the claims must stop but Mr Binley has not had to repay the £57,000 he improperly received while the Speaker deliberated.

The latest disclosure concerning MPs’ expenses will cast further serious doubts over the policing of the system by the parliamentary authorities.

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Brian Binley Liquor Letter

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Binley's Previous Crime:

An MP, who tried to get a driving ban overturned by claiming it would harm his constituents, has lost his appeal. Brian Binley, MP for Northampton South, totted up 12 points on his licence when caught doing 37mph in a 30mph zone in Wellingborough, Northamptonshire. The 65-year-old MP, with nine points already, was given three more and a ban in March, by Towcester magistrates. Judge Richard Bray at Northampton Crown Court confirmed the six-month ban because he had the resources to cope. Mr Binley, caught speeding in August last year, claimed he needed his car to reach constituents in his rural seat.

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