NINETEEN MPs in our region have been ordered to pay back £34,562 of taxpayers' money in a long-awaited review of Parliamentary expenses.

The highest single demand was for £6,786.08 from Wigan MP Neil Turner, who was overpaid by thousands of pounds in mortgage interest claims and also received a duplicate payment for a TV licence.

Mr Turner has already repaid the money.

Gerald Kaufman – Labour MP for Manchester Gorton – was ordered to pay back a total of £4,533.69 relating to claims for two Waterford grapefruit bowls, a £1,851.74 rug and £4,791 of laundry and cleaning.

He was told he should have claimed the bowls on insurance as they were replacements for broken items.

Ann Winterton, Conservative MP for Congleton, was told to repay £143.00 claimed for a gas bill in March 2009. Her husband – Macclesfield MP Sir Nicholas Winterton – had already claimed for the bill on his own expenses.

And George Osborne, the shadow chancellor and Tory Tatton MP, was told to repay £284.26 of mortgage interest.

Ann Coffey (Lab, Stockport) was told to pay back £1,381.08 more than the maximum she had claimed for cleaning costs over five years.

Paul Goggins (Lab, Wythenshawe and Sale East) was asked for £1,075.93 after buying a suite of furniture that cost £2,826 – some £626 over the guideline limit – and receiving too much mortgage interest. Mr Goggins has already repaid £21,307.15 – far above the requested amount.

Flawed

The review, by Sir Thomas Legg, hit out at the 'deeply flawed' House of Commons expenses system.

It recommended a total of 390 MPs repay £1.3million. Almost £800,000 has already been repaid.

An appeals process overseen by former judge Sir Paul Kennedy cut the repayments demanded by £185,000 to a total of £1.12 million.

The highest single repayment demand has been made of Labour MP Barbara Follett, a total of £42,458.

Phil Woolas, the home office minister and Oldham East and Saddleworth MP, was the only MP in our region to successfully challenge a demand by Sir Thomas.

He was originally told to repay £3,530 for overpaid mortgage interest and gas charges. That amount was reduced to £886.16 by Sir Paul.

In a damning passage of the report, Sir Thomas said that between 2004 and 2009 senior figures in the Commons had been more focused on furthering the “immediate interests of MPs” than “propriety in public expenditure”.

The former Whitehall mandarin said the “culture of deference” in the Fees Office had left it “vulnerable to the influence of higher authorities in the House of Commons, from the Speaker down, and of individual MPs”.

“In practice, during most of the review period, these influences tended more towards looking after the immediate interests of MPs than to safeguarding propriety in public expenditure,” he added.

Damaging

Sir Paul said it was “damaging, unfair and wrong” to publicly state that MPs who made apparently genuine claims within existing rules had engaged in “tainted” practices or had acted improperly.

He disputed the Legg review’s decision to order the wholesale repayment of so-called “conflicted transactions”- such as buying or renting a second home from a close relative, a company in which the MP had shares, or a close associate.

In his report, Sir Thomas said he had regarded all such claims - of which there were seven - “as tainted and the whole payment accordingly invalid”.

In a statement, the ruling Commons Members Estimate Committee (MEC) set a deadline of February 22 for MPs to arrange repayments of the amount demanded.

The largest sums ordered to be repaid by sitting MPs - after appeals are taken into account - were £42,458 by Barbara Follett (Lab, Stevenage), £36,909 by Bernard Jenkin (Con, North Essex), £31,193 by Andrew Mackay (Con, Bracknell), £29,398 by John Gummer (Con, Suffolk Coastal), £29,243 by Julie Kirkbride (Con, Bromsgrove) and £24,878 by Liam Fox (Con, Woodspring).