50 MPs join stampede to hand back £500,000

The sum lays bare the abuses, fiddles and simple errors in MPs' claims which are now deemed hard to justify.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown agreed to repay £150 for a plumbing bill which was mistakenly claimed twice.

Chancellor Alistair Darling will hand back nearly £700 billed for service charges on a London flat while he was also claiming allowances on his grace-and-favour home in Downing Street.

Tory leader David Cameron has given back £680 claimed for repairs to his Oxfordshire property including clearing wisteria and vines.

Shadow chancellor George Osborne will write a cheque for £440.62 claimed for a chauffeur company to drive him from Cheshire to London. And Lib-Dem leader Nick Clegg is repaying £80.20 for international phone calls.

Most of these claims, while embarrassing, are small scale.

However, former environment minister Elliot Morley, who steps down at the next election, is paying back £16,000 in mortgage interest payments he claimed on his constituency home in Scunthorpe after the mortgage had ended.

Health minister Phil Hope is giving back £41,709 he received for refurbishing, furnishing and running a two-bedroom south London flat.

Luton South Labour MP Margaret Moran will repay £22,500 which she claimed to treat dry rot at a property in Southampton which she declared as her second home.

Former communities secretary Hazel Blears has written a cheque for £13,000 for the taxman for capital gains tax not paid on the sale of a London flat.

Bury North Labour MP David Chaytor has arranged to repay nearly £13,000 claimed for a "phantom mortgage".

Tory policy supremo Oliver Letwin has said he will repay £2,000 for pipe repairs under his tennis court, shadow education secretary Michael Gove £7,000 on furniture costs, shadow health secretary Andrew Lansley £2,600 for home improvements and shadow Commons leader Alan Duncan around £5,000 for gardening claims.

Tory grandee Sir John Butterfill has agreed to pay back about £20,000 after claiming mortgage interest payments and council tax for the "servants' wing" at his home near Woking.

Eurosceptic Tory MP Bill Cash has said he will hand back £15,000 spent renting a London flat from his daughter.

Shadow Welsh secretary Cheryl Gillan put in a bill including £4.47 for dog food which she will repay.

Tory MP Douglas Hogg is repaying £2,200, the cost of cleaning his moat, though he disputes whether he specifically billed the taxpayer for this work.