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| Hoon in 3rd home scandal |
TRANSPORT Secretary Geoff Hoon pocketed more than £90,000 in housing expenses while enjoying a grace-and favour home.
The Cabinet minister raked in the cash while living in freebie London pad Admiralty House at taxpayers’ expense.
Mr Hoon claimed up to £20,902 a year in Additional Costs Allowance — designed to cover maintaining a second home — between 2001 and 2006 when he was Defence Secretary and Leader of the House. At the time he also owned a £500,000 house in South London and a constituency home in Derby worth £480,000.
Taxpayers had to shell out an estimated £100,000 a year to keep Mr Hoon in Admiralty House. A spokeswoman for Mr Hoon said: “The claims were entirely within the rules and Mr Hoon took advice from the fees office. He did not choose to go into Admiralty House but had to for security reasons.”
Meanwhile, David Cameron will ban his top Shadow Cabinet ministers from claiming a second home allowance if they get into power and take government grace-and-favour houses in London.
Gordon Brown was given £17,017 last year and Chancellor Alistair Darling £20,675 for the cost of living away from home. But both enjoyed rent-free accommodation in their official Downing Street apartments at taxpayers’ expense. A Tory source said last night: “The second home allowance is supposed to subsidise the cost of living away from a main home.
“But if that cost is being met by the taxpayer then you should not be able to claim for what is effectively a third home.”
There are a dozen free grace-and-favour properties available to senior government ministers in Whitehall.
The second home payments are just one example of the lax rules that allow MPs to profit from property without breaking any rules.
The News of the World can also reveal 138 MPs admit they rent out extra homes apart from their parliamentary and London homes.
An examination of the latest Members’ Allowance Expenditure, which is for the year ended March 2008, reveals that they also employ 220 relatives.
MPs with a declared additional property include former Home Secretary David Blunkett who enjoyed a grace-and-favour home during his tenure in the Cabinet. He ‘temporarily’ receives rent from a second home in London.
GREEDY MPs have had to ditch plans to squander millions of pounds on swanky new constituency offices.
Commons authorities planned to up the budget from £2.8 million to £6 million so MPs could move into up-market addresses. But as public anger over claiming huge expenses thunders on they have been forced to climb down.
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