Tony Moorey, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
In 2009 the Daily Telegraph unleashed the parliamentary expenses scandal. This affected many MPs of all parties probably just about equally across the House. We will only concern ourselves with the Labour miscreants of whom I have carefully selected a dozen or so. It needs to be pointed out that they all denied wrongdoing and further stated that all the claims were within the guidelines. They actually weren’t all within the guidelines because some of these toerags were prosecuted. My point would be that the rules are morally wrong and should be tightened up. I fear they are all back up to their tricks again. In the meantime here are a few highlights.
We have to start with old Satan Blair himself. His expense claims were inexplicably but not unexpectedly shredded and this meant his claims could not be investigated. They must have been well dodgy. He leads a charmed life, anyone else would have been hounded into insanity.
Then we have the Ballses, Ed and Yvette, who majored in flipping houses over and over to get maximum advantage from main and second residences. They really should have had their collars felt.
Who could forget Jacqui “fivebellies” Smith claiming a wardrobe in her sister’s house as her main residence while her real one was done up by us while it pretended to be her second residence. Her husband was also claiming for porn films featuring well endowed dark chaps. Extracting the Michael does not begin to cover it.
Minister Tony McNulty claimed expenses on a second home only 8 miles from his main residence. This home was occupied by his parents. He was asked to repay nearly £14k and resign from the government. He lost his seat in the 2010 election.
Denis MacShame was another famous one, he claimed for 8 laptops in 3 years. He also passed 12 invoices from his brother’s “European Policy Institute” to parliament. In 2013 he pleaded guilty to false accounting and was sentenced to six months. After he was released from clink he was ejected from the European Parliament members’ bar where he had been talking to Nigel Farage grovelling for a communications job.
Michael Martin, the unlamented former speaker of the House resigned in 2009 after a string of expense fiddles including a refurb of his quarters that cost us £1.7 million over seven years.
Hazel Blears claimed one pound less than the maximum expenses allowed and dodged £13k capital gains tax when selling one of her properties. She was obviously confused whether it was her main or second residence and finally stood down in 2015. Since then she had had a variety of jobs in QUANGOs. They look after each other these crooks.
Kitty Ussher tried to get her somewhat rundown house done up at our expense, about £20k of it. She then flipped around her main and second residences while selling her house in Burnley. Of course she was trying to reduce her CGT bill by £3,420. As was usual she claimed she had done nothing wrong and left parliament in 2010 for a career in QUANGOs.
Poor old David Laws was done for claiming expenses on his second home while renting other properties so he could be with his secret lover and long term partner James. He claimed he did not want to upset his dear old mum who had no idea he batted for the other side.
The following MPs were done for false accounting, David Chaytor, Jim Devine, Eric Illsley and Eric Morley. Ann Moffat was done for dodgy travel expenses.
Finally who could forget Baroness Uddin who was fiddling like mad and had to repay £125k.
You could easily get a list very similar to this one for the Tories and the LibDems were not averse to bending the rules either. The SNP are institutionally corrupt so I guess they also have a list of shame.
I suspect there were quite a few I have missed but this was enough to rekindle fond memories.
© well_chuffed 2026
