Disgraced rent-swapping Labour MP Linda Riordan has told her the Halifax Courier she will sell her London flat and pay back the capital gains or profit to the taxpayer. Last week it was revealed that hard left Riordan skimmed £1,000-a-month profit by renting out her mortgaged London home while claiming rent for another nearby house on expenses.

“I have decided to place the flat on the market this week, and after speaking to Iain Mckenzie this weekend (the person renting the flat) he has agreed to move out as soon as is practically possible. I have always abided by the rules. Furthermore, I have agreed to pay IPSA back any capital gains. I will, on the assumption that my flat sells, pay any profit to the taxpayer. Of course I cannot speak for other MPs or ex-MPs who are or may continue to make profits.”

Housing benefit fraudsters go to jail when they are caught out, MPs can just promise not to do it again. Shameless Linda Riordan didn’t even say sorry. She only has a majority of around 1,000 – the people of Halifax know what to do in 2015…

When Guido was doing his own digging into rent-swappers last week one potential name that cropped up was that of Labour MP Meg Munn. Sheffield Heeley’s finest is a well-known trougher, employing both her husband as her researcher and her sister-in-law as an assistant in her constituency. When Guido asked Meg if she was a rent-swapper on Thursday she denied it outright:

@Wickham_A no—
Meg Munn (@MegMunnMP) October 18, 2012

It seems Munn is suffering from a convenient case of amnesia. It turns out she did use a rent-swapping arrangement up until April of this year, with the Register of Members’ Interests revealing her little trick ended just six months ago. She claimed for over £16,000 in rent-swapping expenses over the last financial year alone. Now Munn is quickly rowing back, suddenly recalling – that’s right – that the rules are to blame:

“When in London I now live in a rented flat. I would have preferred to continue to live in the flat I owned, but IPSA’s rules do not allow this.”

Funny how she forgot to mention all this when Guido first came calling…

However bad your Monday morning might be going, at least you aren’t as hard-up as poor old Andy Burnham. Over the weekend he published his heart-wrenching sob story excuse for why he has been outed as a shamed rent-swapper. It almost brought a tear to Guido’s eye:

“After the 2010 Election, IPSA changed the rules to stop MPs claiming for mortgage interest. I wanted to stay at my flat but I could no longer afford to do so and was forced to leave by August 2012. In June this year, I moved to an unfurnished, rented flat in Kennington. I now claim accommodation expenses on this new property alone. I make no claim in respect of the old flat. However, all this has left me in the unusual situation of having a flat in London on which I have a mortgage to pay but where I am unable to live. I don’t want to sell it so have had to rent it out. The rent I receive covers the mortgage, the agents’ management fee and on-going maintenance costs. IPSA is right to prevent MPs making capital gains on properties with the help of the taxpayer. I support rules to stop this. However, I believe they could have been introduced without asking MPs to move to more expensive rented accommodation. If the rules changed again to reflect this, I would move back to my old flat at the earliest opportunity.”

It wasn’t Andy’s fault he had to send the taxpayer the bill, it was the rules of course! He “couldn’t afford” to pay his own way despite earning three times the average wage as an MP. He was “forced to leave” his home and live in an “unfurnished flat” with the plebs in Kennington. Don’t believe the spin, Burnham’s snout is so far in the trough he is fast looking like one of the most piggy MPs. Poor Burnham is financing his buy-to-let scheme and building up a little nest egg courtesy of the taxpayer. He is the highest-profile rent-swapper yet…

Bill Cash has form for dodgy expenses. Last time round the Staffordshire MP was denounced by David Cameron for claiming over £15,000 to pay his daughter rent for her London flat, so it’s no surprise that Guido has caught him at it again. Millionaire Cash lives in a massive country house in Shropshire, one the biggest houses owned by anybody in the Commons. According to the Register of Members’ Interests he also has a share in a Pimlico property that he receives rental income for. Despite all this Cash has just started renting a new flat in London, charging the taxpayer for his rent on expenses. In April alone he asked taxpayers for over £2,000.

Dave told him last time round that he was on thin ice. Now Cash has crashed through.

Why does one of the richest men in Parliament need to bill the taxpayer for rent when he already owns a house in London and another mansion in Shropshire?

With his über-safe 13,000 majority he’s able to take liberties. And your cash to pay his bills. 

The original expenses scandal cost dozens of corrupt MPs their jobs, the worst offenders ended up behind bars. Now the rent-swapping sleaze that John Bercow is trying to cover up has been blown wide open. This morning Guido is listing the most shameless rent-swappers…

The usual suspects kept cropping up when Guido started digging around last week. Top of the pile was surprise, surprise Denis MacShane, outed in the Times this weekend. In addition to his property back in Rotherham – remember he rented his garage to himself on expenses for £125,000 – MacShame owns a £700,000 house in Pimlico just a few minutes walk from Parliament, which he rents out under the IPSA rules and then claims £1,450-a-month expenses to rent another home in London. Making cash off the back of the taxpayers when he has no reason to exploit the IPSA loophole except to enrich himself…

When The Times confronted him he claimed he had stopped doing it – convenient. We have some further questions for him, when did he stop the fiddle? Why can’t MacShame live in his posh Pimlico pad right next to Westminster? Why does millionaire MacShane have to bill the taxpayer rent for a house he doesn’t need to rent?

Because he is taking us for a ride. Again…

The Manchester Evening News is reporting that Andy Burnham is a rent-swapper. They accuse him of letting out a London home while renting another property in the capital at the taxpayers’ expense. It’s a bit odd given that the Guido did some digging around Burnham this morning and found that he has been claiming thousands of pounds worth of mortgage interest for his home on expenses. Either way a member of the Shadow Cabinet is taking public money to subsidise living in his London flat while renting out another London property at the same time. The people of Leigh should remember that in 2015. Many, many more to come…

IPSA say MPs renting out property they own “is an issue of their own private financial affairs over which we rightly have no authority”,  hinting that they will review the loophole that allows MPs to rent from other MPs. It will be part of a public consultation next month and Guido suspects that the public are not going to like the fact that some 124 MPs have income from renting property they own and 27 of them are renting flats in London despite the fact that they already own property in the capital.

Despite this, Guido hears the more feeble parts of the Lobby are hesitant with hacks divided as to how heavy to go on this taxpayer subsidised property racket. Hacks for the popular press are grumbling that ‘the FT and Bloomberg are behaving like hand-jobs’ for MPs while the Telegraph, Sun and the Mail want to gun for them over the latest expenses scandal. The argument that because IPSA signed this off it must sounds dangerously like the defence employed in 2009. It didn’t last long that time either…

Peter Luff was one of the worst expense troughers – his expensive tastes demands from the taxpayers last time around included a £625 china service, £1,583 on dining room table, £500 for Aga servicing, £809.91 for a TV and another china set for £367 a few years later. In short he was one of the worst troughers caught in 2009 to survive the 2010 election.

He has responded to revelations that he is, surprise-surprise, a rent-swapper with a David Laws style defence that the taxpayer would have saved money if he had broken the rules rather than merely gamed the system. In the interests of fairness Guido reproduces his argument in full:

“The new Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (IPSA) expenses scheme did not allow MPs to claim the cost of mortgage interest. I could not, therefore, afford to live in my London flat and I had no choice but to sell it or to rent it out. Having only recently purchased it, I chose to rent it out and this information has been in the public domain for two years, it having been properly declared in the Register of Members’ Interests. 

IPSA specified that when MPs are away from home they must live in rented property or stay in a hotel. When I am in London, I now therefore live in a rented flat. This is not my preference – I would have preferred to continue to live in the flat I own, but IPSA’s well-meaning rules designed to safeguard the taxpayers’ interests and promote transparency oblige me to do so. Ironically, the costs to the taxpayer would have been lower had I been allowed to continue with my previous arrangements.”

The obvious question that is unanswered is why a Tory MP on £65,738 thinks that he can’t afford to live in the Kennington flat we have so lavishly furnished with tea sets for him – the mortgage was just £657 a month in 2007 and would be considerably less today with lower interest rates. The average wage in London is less than half what Luff earns. Luff is standing down at the next election before the voters kick him out. Good riddance…

The names are coming out. The names of MPs fiddling the system to maximise their expenses by renting their mortgaged property out so that they can then rent another property with the taxpayers picking up the bills for both. Say goodbye at the next election to Linda Riordan, the Labour MP for Halifax, not satisfied with earning three times as much as her constituents she employs her partner in her office on £42,500. Pushing their take from the taxpayer over the £100,000-a-year level.

That just isn’t enough for this little piggie, she rents out her London flat to another MP and skims off an extra £1,000-a-month in profit from the taxpayer, charging a rent of £1,560 on a property where her mortgage costs her some £500-a-month. She also claims £1,473 from the taxpayer to pay the rent for her own property. The combined £3,000 monthly claim represents an extra burden on the taxpayer which would not have been necessary had Riordan not contrived her tenancy. Housing benefits fraudsters go to jail for less.

UPDATE: Linda Riordan is a member of the hard left Socialist Campaign Group.

Her friend Helen Goodman MP thinks Guido is motivated by sexism:

@GuidoFawkes And what about all male MPs who do that? You tweeting them too or is your attack pure sexism?—
Helen Goodman (@HelenGoodmanMP) October 19, 2012

Incidentally, we’re working on more names – mostly male- from all parties…

Another batch of politicians, another expenses scandal. This morning’s Telegraph reveals that John Bercow is attempting under the cover of “security reasons” to cover-up the publication of another round explosive expenses documents that would expose a property merry-go-round between rent-swapping MPs.

Here Guido gives the “How-To” low-down on how sleazy MPs are swapping their rent to line their own pockets:

The first and most simple method of rent-swapping involves the MPs who make money renting out their own previously taxpayer-funded properties while claiming expenses to rent out homes nearby. According to The Telegraph Chris Bryant rents out his mansion flat in Bloomsbury while claiming £2,000 expenses for rent on another London property. We have repeatedly asked him for an explanation this morning without receiving any reply. The Speaker claims the truth cannot be released because it would pose a security risk. Laughable, Guido and anyone else who wants to know, already knows where he lives.

The second, far more serious, category of rent-swapping covers a handful of MPs suspected of renting out properties to each other, effectively an “I’ll pay yours if you pay mine” scheme. MPs are banned from renting homes to relatives but a loophole in the rules allows them to trouser huge sums of money by renting out properties to other current and former MPs. Bercow cites security reasons for not revealing the address or names of landlords, but there is absolutely no reason why he cannot release the names of the MPs involved in this form of rent-swapping. It is a cover up.

There is also potentially a third category: the so-called “phantom” rent swap. This involves the possibility of MPs telling the authorities they have moved when in reality they have not, and then swapping their rent on the quiet.

If these people were claiming housing benefit “Rent Swapping” like this would fall into the category of benefit fraud plain and simple, it is in the parlance of welfare fraud investigators a “contrived tenancy” punishable by up to 10 years imprisonment.

Stay tuned. There is more to come…