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About 50 MPs have rushed to repay £500,000 of taxpayers' cash following public outrage over their expenses.
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.
Reader views (3)
There is no mention of Jacqui Smith - will she repay the £116,000 she claimed for her "main" home which was a spare bedroom in her sister's house whilst at the same time her husband was being paid £40,000 p.a. for being a "househusband". Does she honestly believe that by merely resigning as home secretary will quell the anger and contempt felt for her by tax payers?
- R.F., Yorks, UK, 19/06/2009 07:40
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Will Ms Blears remember to pay the overdue interest on this money she should have paid a while back ?
- Marianne, SW France/London, 18/06/2009 19:44
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How do the taxpayers know if any money has been payed back, is there anyway we can check or do we just say thank you, you are very honest.
- Alex., brighton, 18/06/2009 16:43
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