Jacqui Smith poised to say sorry to MPs for misusing second home allowance

[Hopeless Romantic]

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.

..

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.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/oct/12/smith-expenses-breach