Home-flipping MPs should pay back money - Clegg

3.20.09pm BST (GMT +0100) Wed 14th Oct 2009

Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg has demanded that MPs who "flipped" homes or avoided capital gains tax pay back the money and be punished. Both practices were heavily criticised during the expenses scandal but have not been addressed by the parliamentary inquiry.

Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg MP and Lewisham West & Penge candidate Alex Feakes are appalled at the expenses claimed by some MPs

In an article in the Daily Telegraph (the newspaper that originally broke the MPs' expenses scandal), Clegg observed that "most people expected the worst offences to come under the toughest scrutiny - MPs who avoided Capital Gains Tax, claimed cash for mortgages that didn't exist or 'flipped' their second home so they could claim for renovations on house after house."

But the parliamentary review into MPs expenses has not addressed any of these matters.

"Every single MP who flipped, avoided Capital Gains Tax or claimed for non-existent mortgages must be forced to repay the money, and held to account. At the moment, even those who are resigning in shame at the next general election will receive pay-offs of up to a year's salary to help them 'resettle' into life outside Parliament," Clegg added. "It's a scandal."

Among those resigning are Conservative MP for Beckenham Jacqui Lait. She is one of three Bromley Tory MPs who claimed second home allowances for houses in London. None of the Lib Dems eight London MPs claimed for a second home, and no Lib Dem MP flipped their mortgage.

Alex Feakes, the Lib Dem parliamentary candidate for Lewisham West and Penge, said "It is a disgrace that local MPs have been receiving taxpayers' money for unnecessary expenses, and Jim Dowd, Labour's Lewisham West MP, has claimed the maximum amount of 'petty cash' allowances - £3,000 each year - without having to produce any receipts!

"I promise that If elected I will have one home, here in the constituency, and I won't expect my voters to pay for it."