Nick Clegg managed to claim the maximum (in fact he had to be restrained from over claiming again).  £1,600  for the gardening – Sir Thomas Legg says the gardening limit is £1,000.   It all mounts up…

Douglas Carswell claimed £12.25 for an iron.  Nadine Dorries would not cooperate with the parliamentary authorities over where she actually lived and had a £1,000 gas bill – she must be contributing to global warming.  The mystery continues…

Gordon Brown, class warrior, claimed £1,932.50 for a domestic servant, £175 for a gardener, he paid back £500 for painting a summer house, we still pay his Sky Sports.  He isn’t slow in burdening the taxpayers for his dry cleaning and laundry either.  He taxes the many for a few domestic luxuries…

UPDATE : Why is big Graham Allen claiming for dry cleaning a blouse?

UPDATE II : Jacqui Smith just keeps on troughing; £555.74 for yet another television, a £244.90 DVD player and £611 spent on a new double bed and mattress – separate bedroom perhaps?

UPDATE III : We paid to service the shadow chancellor’s Aga.  George Osborne appears to have mismanaged the only budget he is so far in charge of, he over-spent above the expense limits.  Not a sign of an innate instinct for cost control.

UPDATE IV : Mark Oaten tried to claim £147 for an ‘Onyx Silver Label mattress’ (double). The fees office queried this, as the delivery address was not that of his second home.  Hmmm…

Purnell has been living the glam Soho life at our expense.  In November 2008 he rented a plush flat in Soho for £2,500 a month (the landlord made a special condition that it was thoroughly cleaned throughout at the end of his tenancy).  He buys most of his food at the fancy, ultra-expensive, Fresh and Wild organic deli.  We pay for his TV subscription, cable TV (not sure what he watches).  He is kept looking sharp courtesy of the taxpayer picking up his dry cleaning bills.

He spends his red box free evenings hanging out in Soho clubs – not trendy Polpo mind you- and getting so tired and emotional he loses his wallet and security pass.

In the past James Purnell has always been a bit shifty with his main residence claims – they tend to get flipped depending on what is the most rewarding in terms of expenses and capital gains dodges. He also got into a bit of trouble for leaving his old flat in a disgusting state. Purnell’s constituency “primary residence” (pictured here) looks like a dump – not that he is ever seen there.   He clearly has decided to move up in the world.   In the real world you would need to earn £50,000 before tax  just to cover the rent on his playboy flat…

Check your own MPs troughing yourself, returns are online here.

Guido is trying to get hold of the letter regarding this that Sir Thomas Legg is sending refusenik troughers.

If any co-conspirator wants to fax it across…

UPDATE : Headline changed to delete pensions because, according to Gary Gibbons, if MPs are leaving they will plunder their severance (up to £60,000) or their winding up allowance (up to £45,000), and if MPs are staying they can plunder their salary.

The Attorney General, Baroness Scotland flouted the tax laws, broke employment laws she herself drafted and fiddled £170,000 in expenses.  She was given a £5,000 fine for what she described as “technical breach of the rules”.  The rest of us call it breaking the law.  As far as Guido knows the only other issue she faces is a Bar Standards Council investigation for bringing the Bar into disrepute.   The Attorney General has got off very lightly…

You could argue that her former maid, Loloahi Tapui, also committed a “technical breach of the rules” in overstaying her visa.  She now faces charges and a prison sentence.  Does anyone else feel that the weight of the law is falling disproportionately on Lolo?

The Blairite loyalist Baroness Morgan has been caught fiddling her overnight expenses by pretending her Wandsworth home isn’t her main home.  The Lords authorities refuse to investigate this kind of fiddle despite, or  perhaps because, it is so widespread.  She tells the Lords that her main home is in Petersfield and she swears to Companies House on corporate filings she is ordinarily resident in Wandsworth.  Give you one guess to whom she is lying…

On a lighter note, Elliot Morley, one of the few MPs predicted to face fraud charges, spends a lot of time reversing edits to his Wikipedia page, mainly trying to erase references to his claiming of our cash on false pretences.  His detractors have managed to slip past the editors a change to the pronunciation of his name:

Guido suspects he won’t be a “shameless freeloader” for much longer…

The pressure on Labour MP Andrew Dismore to step down from the Standards and Privileges Committee is increasing as his explanations unravel.  Guido noted Dismore’s ridiculously high transport claims as far back as 2004:

“Now you can believe that travel costs for Scottish MPs would be higher – if they choose not to let the train take the strain with their free travel warrants – claiming that oh so generous mileage allowance. But Andrew Dismore in Hendon must travel by helicopter – London’s most expensive MP drew £147,650 in expenses last year on top of his salary of £54,725. Nevertheless his attendance record is pretty poor, despite being a London MP he manages to come in the bottom half of attendees, missing a third of all votes. The 35 minute journey on the Tube would cost £20 a week if he came in every day – which he clearly doesn’t – so for the period parliament sits it would cost around £700 – yet his travel expenses are £4,959.”

The Telegraph’s Jon Swaine has hit Dismore again this morning: “Regarding his travel expenses, Mr Dismore said he needed to drive around his constituency throughout the year. He said that he recorded his mileage precisely and was sometimes forced to make three return journeys between Westminster and Hendon in a single day.” Well if he does all that daily driving around his constituency, why does he need a second home elsewhere in London?

Chaytor and Devine say they haven’t been contacted by the CPS. Which doesn’t really mean much…

The Committee on Standards and Privileges is becoming a joke. First David Curry was caught for entertaining his mistress at a second home at our expense. He fell on his sword immediately – as he should. Now another member of the Committee, Andrew Dismore, is found to be paying his lover out of expenses and claiming for a second property that housed her “homeopathic surgery” in trendy Notting Hill.   Bear in mind his constitutency is only  half-an-hour from Westminster on the Northern line and that Dismore has previously enjoyed being London’s most expensive MP for no discernible reason.

He thinks he should just ask fellow members of the Committee on Standards and Privileges if they think he should resign. There is a legal principle nemo debet esse iudex in propria causa, “no one should be judge in his own cause”, of which he should be aware given he is a lawyer. He should just have the decency to just resign now that he is reportedly under investigation by the Parliamentary Standards Commissioner.

How can the disciplinary process be taken seriously if the Parliamentary Standards Commissioner reports to a Committee which includes someone under a cloud for a pretty outrageous abuse of the expenses system? Dismore is a disgrace.

See also: Nothing To Do With Me Guv.

The total absence of anything in the Queen’s Speech on the expenses issue is glaring, could the above be why? The Telegraph reports that Keir Starmer, the Director of Public Prosecutions, will shortly receive a police file on half-a-dozen suspected political financial fraudsters.  A source told The Times: “The investigation is progressing and a file will be ready to go to the CPS by Christmas.”

In the dock we are likely to see three Labour MPs Elliot Morley, David Chaytor and Jim Devine, as well as two Labour peers Baroness Uddin and Lord Clarke of Hampstead joined by one Tory peer Lord Hanningfield.  Tony McNulty, Jacqui Smith and Geoff Hoon have not had police investigations produce a file of evidence for the CPS.  Though they still face the possibility of private prosecutions being brought by the Sunlight Centre and/or the Taxpayers’ Alliance (supported by the Daily Mail).

You can see why Gordon might not be too keen on bringing the expenses issue front and centre…

Steven Byers is standing down as an MP after 30 years of troughing, coincidentally leaked details show that he claimed £125,000 in second home expenses over five years for a flat wholly owned by his lover.  So effectively he authorised payments to his other half. In the private sector he would be fired and probably prosecuted.   The attitude of his fellow parliamentarians is merely “fill yer boots” and retire on a gold plated index-linked pension.

Labour Party Baroness Whitaker has fiddled £150,000 in expenses by renting a country cottage from Conservative Lord Renton and saying it was her main home. For seven years Baroness Whitaker rented the property, which is on a driveway leading to Lord Renton’s mansion in the Sussex Downs, at the same time as owning a million pound London property.

They really are all at it…