Guess Who Else Is On Mortage Benefit? ; and One Cabinet Minister Managed to Claim Pounds 70,000 of Your Money with No Mortgage at All

Summary

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THREE Cabinet Ministers have claimed Pounds 200,000 between them in Commons expenses for 'second' homes even though they enjoy grace- and-favour apartments and have mortgage payments totalling a fraction of that amount.

Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott, Commons leader Geoff Hoon and Margaret Beckett, the Environment Secretary, all live in free taxpayer-funded Westminster apartments.

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Extract

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Guess Who Else Is On Mortage Benefit? ; and One Cabinet Minister Managed to Claim Pounds 70,000 of Your Money with No Mortgage at All

And, thanks to a loophole in the Commons regulations-they also received generous expenses, worth about Pounds 70,000 each over the past four years, to pay for homes in their constituencies.

But The Mail on Sunday has unearthed official documents which will prompt serious questions about how the tax-free sums can be justified.

According to parliamentary records, the Deputy Prime Minister claimed Pounds 71,000 in Additional Costs Allowance between 2001 and 2005 to pay for his mock-Tudor mansion ...

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