SALISBURY’S MP Robert Key has agreed to repay £530 in expenses.
Mr Key said the money was part of the £1,650 cost of a like-for-like replacement cooker, bought from a Salisbury company, for his constituency home in Harnham.
The MP said Sir Thomas Legg, who has investigated MPs’ expenses at the request of Gordon Brown, “thought I should have bought a cheaper one”.
He said: “I am just not going to argue, and I have written the cheque. I think it’s really important when he has asked people to pay back money we should do so, even though we may not like it.”
Mr Key also acknowledged that four years ago he mistakenly claimed about £7,000 for a mortgage, and was subsequently asked to pay it back, which he did not long afterwards, “as soon as I was notified”.
He said: “It was obviously an error, and it was nothing to do with the current furore.”
The mortgage claim was mentioned in the national press earlier this year when the expenses row first surfaced.
Mr Key said: “I felt it was a big unfair to drag that in when it occurred four years ago and was done and dusted to everybody’s satisfaction within days. It had absolutely nothing to do with the current row.”
The MP’s expenses bills are among the lowest in Parliament. He is ranked 589th out of 645 MPs for the amount he has claimed.
New Forest West MP Desmond Swayne has not been asked to repay anything by Sir Thomas, or by the Conservative Party, which has held its own internal investigation.
Mr Swayne explained the lengths to which he goes to pre-empt any problems.
“I make repayments all the time,” he said. “When I terminated an office equipment contract my deposit of £1,000 was refunded, so I sent it back to the parliamentary authorities.
“I bought a redundant PC from my office for my private use: the parliamentary authorities said it had no market value but I insisted on paying £100 to avoid any suggestion of impropriety.
“A full year before the Daily Telegraph scoop I insisted on an arrangement to repay some £6,000 spent on a kitchen, because I was moving and did not want there to be any suggestion that I had enhanced the property value at the taxpayer's expense.”
He added: “The cost of moving was £10,000, which would have been claimable under the absurd rules at the time. I made no claim.
“I have just made a repayment of £160, being a council tax rebate that I have just received in respect of 2008/09.”
Mr Swayne, who raised questions about the amount being paid out in expenses to MPs as early as 2007, said he entirely understood the public’s anger on the subject. “I am angry too, but we are not all crooks. My own expenses are always in the bottom 10 out of 649.
“It is vital that whatever replaces the current system costs the taxpayer a great deal less.”
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