Second home limit 'target' for MPs

Former minister Chris Mullin said it was "human nature" that MPs would take advantage of large rises in the amount of Additional Costs Allowance (ACA) available in recent years.

His comments will annoy many colleagues as the Commons authorities is battling to keep details of their expenses claims secret.

Mr Mullin, a Labour member of the all-party Standards and Privileges Committee, said: "Human nature being what it is people tend to spend up to the limit of what they are allowed to spend."

He stressed that he was not alleging corruption, only that MPs had taken out bigger mortgages in response to increases in the ACA since 2001.

Mr Mullin's intervention comes amid concern about the uses to which MPs put their allowances after it emerged they can purchase things like £10,000 kitchens and £750 televisions.

"Spending the entire allowance has become the target to be aimed for, rather than recompense for expenses legitimately incurred," he told MPs during a low-profile debate last week. "That is one of the things that have got us into trouble."

Mr Mullin, who claimed only £13,591 out of the ACA last year, called for the allowance to be frozen until it is worth the same, in real terms, that it was in 2001. It was limited then to about £14,000-a-year.

Tory frontbencher MP David Ruffley said the expenses were not abused. Asked about Mr Mullin's comments, he told Sky News: "I think people think that's a problem but most of us are careful for that not to be the case."

The House of Commons Commission, chaired by Speaker Michael Martin, came under fire last week for lodging a High Court appeal against the disclosure of MPs' expenses claims.