FOUR of Stockport’s MPs will reveal their expenses by the end of the week - and two of them have already made public their claims.
Ann Coffey and Andrew Gwynne, Labour MPs for Stockport and Reddish respectively, have provided reams of receipts to the press for inspection in Westminster, as the storm over expenses shows no sign of abating.
And Lib-Dems Mark Hunter and Andrew Stunell, who represent Cheadle and Hazel Grove respectively, say they will release theirs by the end of the week.
Andrew Gwynne, who has been member for Denton and Reddish for four years, showed a file full of receipts to the press on Monday. Click here for ful details of Mr Gwynne's expenses .
He said he had no knowledge of the so-called ‘John Lewis’ list, which acted as a guideline for MPs to cost furniture and household fittings, and bought all his furnishings from Argos, Asda, Ikea and Tesco.
Those claims included an Argos rubber bathmat for £2.49 and two £4.99 Asda lamps.
He said: "I’ve got nothing in my flat that I would not pay for out of my own pocket for my own home - and from the kind of retailers that I would use for my own home."
He added that he had no sympathy for MPs who fiddled the system. "You know when your mortgage is paid off. I remember my dad getting a huge parcel in the post with all the deeds and a letter from the bank saying congratulations.
"You know when you have received that parcel."
Ann Coffey also provided a list of her expenses over the last few years, which included £200 for a cleaner through an agency in London, £249 for a table and £148 for a bedside drawer. Click here for full details of Mrs Coffey's expenses .
She said: "I think greater transparency is important but I also think that it has to be put within the context.
"It is an allowance against which MPs have been able to make reasonable claims for the cost of additional accommodation.
"The issue is the reasonableness about that. I think I’ve spent about £4,000 on furniture in 17 years."
Both Ms Coffey and Mr Gwynne said they would be publishing their expenses on their respective websites.
Mark Hunter, MP for Cheadle and long-time campaigner over expenses transparency, said he was waiting for private financial details to be removed - and said he intended to make his receipts public by the end of the week.
"I’m absolutely staggered by what has been revealed," he added.
"MPs should try to maintain the highest standards and I frankly have no sympathy to those who have been exposed as having abused the system."
And fellow Liberal Democrat Andrew Stunell said he would be doing the same, adding: "The house authorities have told us now that because of all the interest, they are going to be making the tidied-up versions available to MPs within the next 48 hours or so. After they have tidied them up I will be looking to publish them."
A spokesman for Sir Nicholas Winterton, MP for Disley and Poynton, said there were no plans to release details of his expenses ahead of schedule.
Tom Levitt, Labour MP for High Peak, was unavailable for comment.
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AgProv, Somewhere with an SK postcode (18/06/2009 at 11:24)
The response I got from Ms Coffey MP (then PPS to Blair himself) was not helpful, openly suggested I should use my energy to look for work rather than relying on benefits, and bluntly said that there was only so much money in the pot for state benefits and that national resources should be concentrated on those in greatest need.
(I wrote back and told her that as I'd paid my N.I. like everyone else, I expected a return on that insurance policy when I needed it in the form of basic subsistence to tide me over while I was in between jobs. That I didn't expect a Labour MP to talk down to me as if she'd forgotten what party she belonged to, and reminded her of what was then the big political scandal - the unelected cabinet minister whose wallpaper was costed at £600 per roll, or something equally spendthrift. When Ms Coffey MP was lecturing me about the need for state cash to go to those in greatest need, did she mean her colleague's great need for over-priced wallpaper? She never replied)
As the MP for Stockport by all accounts owns three homes, one in the constituency, one in London for work and a marital home in Surrey, I'd dearly love to scrutinise her expense account in some detail, as I've never forgiven her for as good as calling me a benenfit scrounger all those years ago. If her nose has been in the trough, I'd quite like it to be made as public as possible!
(What goes around comes around, Ann...)