Vera Baird is the deputy to the Attorney General and has been the MP for Redcar, (Mo Mowlem's former seat) since 2001. The Independent suggests she will take over as Attorney General next week.
The Telegraph's expenses report on her states:
'In order to claim Additional Costs Allowance she designates a flat in Crouch End, north London, as her main home and nominates a four-bedroom house in her constituency as her second residence.
In 2004-5 she claimed £4,309.20 in mortgage interest payments, but spent £7,916.30 on repairs, decoration and furnishings.... Her £4,570 bill for furniture was also cut down because the items were deemed too "luxurious", and she was told she could not claim £349 for a metal wall sculpture. However she did manage to get tens of thousands of pounds of public money to pay for a new roof, flooring, windows and a porch at her second home.
In subsequent years she claimed many thousands of pounds for various repairs and renovations. But in 2007-08, her expenses bill for Christmas decorations was rejected. The receipts show that she spent £29.97 in early December 2006 at her local branch of Woolworths on 24 baubles, 20 "snowflake" lights and an extension lead.
At another shop she spent £5.48 on decorations, and, at a third, £214.97 on what appear to be 48in and 72in artificial Christmas trees.
Ms Baird has said: "I used my allowances claim to furnish and maintain my house."
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2 comments:
sigh, they are *all* at it.
You really shouldn't believe everything you read in the "news"papers. They actually had to print an apology for that days later: Vera Baird does not designate a flat in London as her first home "in order to claim" for a second home in her constiuency, and it was libellous of the paper to have put it that way. Her HOUSE in London is genuinely her first home as she lived there before she was elected for Redcar. Redcar is therefore genuinely her second home. The replacement porch, floor and windows were installed following a flood. It's amazing to me that apparently intelligent people seem happy to read something a paper (who elected the jounalists?) with its own agenda and just reproduce it as if it were true...
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