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Bedfordshire MP defends main home in the Cotswolds
19 Mar 2010The Member of Parliament who said that MPs were victims of a “McCarthy-style witch-hunt” over expenses confirmed today she lists a cottage 90 miles from Westminster as her main home.
Nadine Dorries made newspaper headlines by attacking media coverage of the parliamentary expenses abuse scandal and claimed some MPs were being driven to consider suicide.
Today she said that a recently-acquired property in a pretty Cotswolds village is designated with the Commons authorities as her main home, while her second home is a large house in her Mid-Bedfordshire constituency.
The admission opened Ms Dorries to criticism for claiming a second home even though she does not have a property in London for overnight stays near the Commons.
While her arrangement does not break any rules, Commons allowances are usually justified on the grounds that MPs need to spend nights both in their constituency and in Westminster.
Ms Dorries only recently acquired the Cotswolds home.
She used her blog to attack the Daily Telegraph which revealed the existence of the cottage.
“I have posted a picture of a rather snowed-in, also newly acquired main home which the Telegraph managed to make look like a tiny pin prick!” she wrote.
Her main home was described by the newspaper as a “tiny” one-bedroom lodge-keeper's cottage, sited close to the home of Lynn Elson, who was paid £34,000 out of public funds for public relations work by the MP.
On her blog the MP said she made nothing from having a second home. “I never chose to buy, always to rent, and therefore I make no profit.
“There is no flipping' or home improvements claimed for. I have never claimed from the famous John Lewis list or claimed for cleaners, gardeners, ducks or anything else.”
Last year, the MP made headlines by attacking press revelations about expenses claims as “a form of torture”.
She also said: “I think people are seriously beginning to crack.”
The cottage is understood to be owned by Ms Dorries on a leasehold basis. She defended listing it as a main home because she spends more nights there over the course of a year.
Ms Dorries claimed she was being targeted because she had criticised the paper and its owners.
She said: “The Daily Telegraph really has lost the plot. It wants a scalp and it wants mine.
“The trouble is, in order to get a scalp, the person wearing it needs to have done something wrong.”
She said their reporter “stood out like a sore thumb” in her village “in the biting wind wearing his “city slicker” grey overcoat.
He was apparently “chased down the lane on the three mile walk back to the main road with his leather briefcase between his legs”.
Reader views (7)
She does not deserve to get re-elected as she still does not understand that she is an MP to serve the people and not con them so that she can have a second home
- G Farley, Oxon, 19/03/2010 16:17
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just another thought she should be kicked out of the conservative party for snubbing her nose at the tory leader over this,but that backslider cameron has not got the bottle to do it that's why his pole ratings are going down the toilet IT'S A HUNG PARLIMENT
- Anon Leicester, england, 19/03/2010 15:59
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Unfortunately I feel it is the influence of Europe, the political class is beyond reproach.
"Let them eat cake!"
- Frank, Home Counties, England., 19/03/2010 13:55
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they learn nothing and take the electorate for fools
NOTHING NEW THERE THEN why dont they put them all up in the olympic village when its over then they won't need second home allowences as we already own them so that's a win win situation
- Anon Leicester, england, 19/03/2010 13:35
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I would say this woman is "as mad as a box of frogs" but feel it is demeaning to frogs.
- Peter Doff, Filey UK, 19/03/2010 13:12
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This Tory trough-snouter is typical of everything that is wrong with the politicians of the ConLibLab conspiracy.
We need real change, and that can only happen by electing fewer of the 'establishment' and more MPs from the smaller parties.
If the electorate is not brave enough to force that change, we will simply end up with more of the same dross we have now.
- Keith Lonsdale, Doncaster, 19/03/2010 13:06
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Just another few weeks to go and this odious woman will be forced to retire to her "main" home - wherever that may be - and will no longer be able to continue thieving from the public purse. Just prior to the election I shall be asking editors to publish a list of what each MP claimed in expenses to remind tax payers of the scale of this scandal.
- R.F.York, Yorks, UK, 19/03/2010 13:06
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