Labour MP pays back £1,000 after overclaiming on council tax (From Echo)

Labour MP pays back £1,000 after overclaiming on council tax

5:45pm Monday 22nd June 2009

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BASILDON MP Angela Smith has paid back more than £1,000 of wrongly claimed expenses on her second home.

The Labour minister has joined a growing list of MPs who have paid back money, but says she spotted the mistake and volunteered the repayment, rather than being told to cough up.

Mrs Smith paid back money, which she accepts she wrongly claimed for council tax payments and service charges on her two-bedroom Elephant and Castle flat, jointly owned with husband, Basildon Labour councillor Nigel Smith.

Mrs Smith put in claims for 12 months worth of council tax and service charges when she had only actually had to pay for ten months during those years.

She admits being at fault, but says the fees office is also partially to blame for not spotting the discrepancies, because she also put in the annual bills, which showed the differing amount she should have claimed for the periods concerned.

Mrs Smith said: “I wrongly claimed it, so I have paid it back, but I did not have to pay it back.

“I identified the mistake going through the accounts and realised I sometimes claimed for 12 months when there had actually been ten.”

Mrs Smith claimed £5,581 for mobile phones over the four years, including two replacements and charges. The biggest monthly bill was £325.

She claimed £1,661 in petty cash, plus a small number of claims for photographs and two digital cameras totalling £576.

Mrs Smith said she queried the £325 phone bill, then switched to a cheaper contract.

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Don South, says...
6:06pm Mon 22 Jun 09

Any more spinning and you will take off and land in the Thames.

I am sick and tired of MPs blaming the fees office for their troughing. Why didnt you claim the whole years bill in one go - like most MPs did - or was it because anything under £250 you did not have to provide a receipt?

You have only coughed up because you got caught out because your expenses got published and people could go through them and work it all out.

Pity so much is blacked out.

How long have you been overclaiming? The receipts only go back to 2004. You have been an MP from 1997.

What about the other 7 years of possible overclaiming?

Onto the much more serious issue.

The flat you jointly own with a joint mortgage with your husband Nigel Smith.

Is it right and proper that us taxpayers are paying your husbands half of the mortgage?

Should you have only claimed 50% of the mortgage interest not 100%.

When you cease being an MP you get to keep the flat and your husband gains at the taxpayers expense.

This is obscene - how many years have you claimed 100% mortgage instead of 50%? 12 years?

You still have not justified you food bill of £13,900 - or £67 per week.

Jobseekers allowance for a single person is £64.30 per week.

So you claim more per week than an unemployed person has to spend on food clothes and bills.

Are you worth it?