Jacqui Smith, the former home secretary, is expected to apologise to the Commons today after being criticised by a committee of MPs for using the second home allowance to fund her family home.
In a report, the Commons standards and privileges committee said Smith had been in breach of the rules between 2004 and 2009 because she claimed that a house in London she shared with her sister was her main home.
This meant she could use the parliamentary second home allowance to fund costs associated with her family home in her Redditch constituency.
Between June 2007 and March 2009 Smith was actually spending more nights at her constituency home than in London, the committee said. This contradicts claims made by Smith when the complaints about her claims were first raised.
The MPs accepted that Smith had been told by the parliamentary authorities that it was "reasonable" to nominate the London property as her main home. In the light of the "mitigating circumstances", the MPs did not propose any punishment beyond recommending that Smith should apologise to the Commons.
The MPs also claimed that it could not be established "with any certainty" that the taxpayer lost out as a result of the arrangement.
In their report, they also said that Smith had wrongly claimed for pay-per-view films when submitting claims for a cable television service at her family home. This came to light when it emerged that she had claimed for two pornographic films watched while her husband was in the house.
At the time Smith said she would repay the cost of the films. But today's report reveals that she wrongly claimed £185.20 in relation to cable and internet services, and that she actually repaid £400 to cover the cost of what she thought were unjustified claims.
The MPs recommended no further action in relation to this complaint because Smith repaid the money.
Smith, in evidence to the inquiry, said she was "disappointed" that the investigation into her conduct had not led to "a fairer set of conclusions".
Smith was one of the first MPs to face severe criticism over her expenses because details of her claims were leaked to the media before the Daily Telegraph started publishing revelations about all MPs. As well as the claim for two pornographic films, she was attacked for claiming more than £20,000 a year to fund her family home and for including receipts detailing items such as a bath plug in her claims.
The controversy over her claims contributed to her decision to tell Gordon Brown that she wanted to leave the cabinet ahead of the reshuffle earlier this year. She was replaced by Alan Johnson.
MPs are meant to use the second home allowance to fund a second home, not their main one. But until February 2004 ministers had to designate their London home as their main home and John Lyon, the parliamentary commissioner for standards, who investigated the case for the committee on standards and privileges, concluded that there was nothing wrong with Smith designating her Redditch home as her second home up until that point.
Lyon said that an MP's main home is normally the one where he or she spends the most nights. Lyon found that, from June 2007 to March 2009, Smith spent more nights at her constituency home than at her London home – even though, when the complaints about her expenses first surfaced, she said that she spent most of her time in London.
But Lyon told the committee that Smith should have identified her Redditch home as her main home from 2004, and not just from June 2007, because that was consistent with a "normal understanding" of the rules.
"In my judgment, Ms Smith misdirected herself by focusing on the nature and location of her job (where she spent her long working day) and not the nature and location of her overnight accommodation (where she went whenever her working life allowed). As a result, Ms Smith reached a mistaken interpretation of the term 'main home' which, on any objective view, did not fit her personal circumstances and which was therefore contrary to the purpose as well as to the letter of the rule," Lyon said in the report on the case he submitted to the committee.
Lyon also said that the "gravitational pull in terms of family and property" suggested that Redditch was Smith's main home, not London.
In June 2007 Smith checked her arrangements with the department of finance and administration in the Commons and she was told it was "reasonable to continue to claim the allowance" against her constituency home because her ministerial job meant she had to spend most of her time in Westminster.
But the standards and privileges committee said this advice was "flawed". The committee concluded: "Whilst we acknowledge that there are mitigating circumstances, Ms Smith clearly breached the rules of the house by wrongly designating her main home from 2004 to 2009. We recommend that Ms Smith apologise to the house by means of a personal statement."
Smith told the committee she did not think this was fair. "I am disappointed that this process has not led to a fairer set of conclusions, based on objective and consistent application of the rules as they were at the time."
Smith claimed £22,110 from the second home allowance in 2006-07, £22,948 in 2007-08 and £19,182 in 2008-09. But the committee concluded that the taxpayer had not necessarily lost out, even though Commons rules meant that Smith could not have used the second home allowance to pay her London rent because her London home belongs to her sister and MPs cannot use allowances to benefit a family member.
"However, she could have bought her own home in London; she could have rented a home in London from a non-relative; or from June 2007 she could presumably have used a taxpayer-funded grace-and-favour residence in central London, as many previous home secretaries have done. Any of these courses could have resulted in a different claim on additional costs allowance, but it is impossible to quantify what the difference in such claims might have been. We do not believe it can be established with any certainty whether the taxpayer is any worse or any better off as a result of Ms Smith's nomination of her main home and subsequent claims against additional costs allowance than would otherwise have been the case," the committee said.
After it emerged that Smith had inadvertently claimed for the cost of watching two pornographic films, Smith said she had repaid the money. But today's report show reveals that she has repaid £400 of the £553,20 she had claimed for her cable television package.
The committee said that, when MPs claim telephone, television and internet services as part of a package, they should take care only to claim for parts of the package. MPs are entitled to claim for news channels, but not for sport or entertainment.
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