Another way they ripped us off

At least three MPs - including LibDem Lembit Opik and David Amess (who has also been claiming the full £400 a month for food) - claimed expenses to cover the costs of renting offices from their own parties, it has emerged.

Mr. Opik, probable future leader of his party, has been shown to have submitted a claim for £8580 to pay for premises rented from his own Montgomeryshire consituency association. Conservative Mr. Amess, perhaps feeling that it would be wrong to take the piss, claimed to recoup 50% (£4750) of the charge for his office - rented from his own association in Southend.

Chris Bryant, the Labour representative for Rhondda, claimed a total of £7536.02 to pay for the rent and utilities at his office, which he too was renting from his association.

Although these three men account for only £20,866 with this particular little scheme - which is a relatively minor amount in comparison with some of the cases that have been revealed since the Government threw us the few surviving scraps of expense claim details that survived the redactor's marker pens, it just goes to show that in some cases MPs have been more than willing to pull every little scam they could possibly think up.

Image adapted from one at Wikipedia, used in accordance with Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike2.0 license.