Well, the claim was for his office where staff work. So quite why would someone want to pick on an employer providing toilet roll (and soap! yes, soap! the sheer luxury!) for his staff?

But perhaps that’s how CCHQ works and the staff there are so used to having to bring their own toilet paper in to work that they don’t see why anyone else should have it provided by their employer? After all, that’s the only logical and fair explanation so it’s bound to be the right one. I’m sure.

The complaint was made by the MP for East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow, Michael McCann. The article related to his Parliamentary expenses, which had been published following the release of the figures by the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (IPSA). Mr McCann argued that a claim made in the article – that his expenses “include £1150 in hotel bills to fund his trips to Westminster, while he also claims for a rented property in central London” – was misleading because it suggested that he had claimed for hotel rooms at the same time as paying rent on a property. In fact, the hotel bills were incurred before he had the property.

The Commission found the claim in the article could have misled readers into believing that the claims for hotel bills and rent were made concurrently, rather than consecutively. The newspaper should have clarified this following the complaint. It failed to do so and the result was a breach of the Code.

The newspaper published the adjudication with due prominence last Wednesday. However, in doing so, it made some minor amendments to the text and failed to publish a proper reference to the PCC in the headline. As a result, it republished the adjudication in full today.

At the time of writing, and despite the original correction being published last week, the words which caused the complaint are still on the local newspaper’s website and in fact come out higher in a search for “Michael McCann” hotel than the PCC’s ruling.

UPDATE: The story has now been pulled from the newspaper’s website, though its headline and snippet are still currently appearing in search results. However, clicking on them or on the link above now takes you to the newspaper’s front page.

Former Labour backbench MP Frank Cook has filed a libel writ against the Sunday Telegraph over a front-page story from May 2009 about his expenses.

He is demanding damages of up to £50,000 from publishers Telegraph Media Group over a front page story and two inside pieces in May 2009 in the Sunday Telegraph.

The stories, which he claims were defamatory, were headed “MP claimed £5 for church collection” and “I’m sorry church claim was unfair.”

Cook, who represents Stockton North, is also suing over a comment headed: “Now it is the people’s turn to be heard.”

He says the articles meant he represented low “value-for-money” as a parliamentarian, and that his £5 claim, which was refused, was an extraordinary abuse of MPs expenses, and was particularly embarrassing and hypocritical because of his support for the campaign to commemorate a Battle of Britain hero …

He says the allegations were given “disproportionate and excessive prominence” in the newspaper and online, and that by mentioning his former job as a gravedigger, the paper hoped to ridicule him.

When speaking to a reporter, he had denied he did not represent value-for-money, but says the paper failed to report that he was ineligible to vote on bills he had chaired, which gave a false impression of his voting record.

You can read the full story here.

NADINE DORRIES, the Conservative MP, faces the first expenses complaint of the new parliament after a row about a £10,000 claim she paid to a friend’s company.

Her former Commons researcher, Peter Hand, is writing to John Lyon, the parliamentary commissioner for standards, questioning whether the claim can be justified.

The complaint will undermine hopes that the expenses controversy can be consigned to the last parliament.

Dorries, who last week retained her mid-Bedfordshire seat, claimed the money for an annual report in 2007 on her performance as an MP, and consultancy services, but Hand said he never saw the report or worked on it.

You can read the full story in the Sunday Times.

MPs’ expenses: Margaret Moran sells taxpayer-funded Luton home for £177,000 profit

The MP for Luton South, who was suspended from the Parliamentary Labour Party over the expenses and lobbying scandals, bought the semi-detached property for £72,995.

She “flipped” her second home designation to the house for just one year but in that time used £22,341 of public money on it, which included the installation of a new central heating system and bathroom, a complete overhaul of the garden and the redecoration of several rooms…

Her three-bedroom house is now being sold for £250,000, making her a £177,005 profit on a house that was improved substantially by public money. (Telegraph)

Andy Strange, a Lib Dem activist in Luton, has an excellent blog on which he’s recounting the Luton South campaign where the Liberal Democrat candidate is Qurban Hussain, who has a very strong chance of taking the seat.

Tory MP David Curry was today ordered to repay £28,000 and issue an apology after the Commons standards and privileges committee ruled that he had broken rules relating to parliamentary expenses.

The findings are particularly embarrassing because Curry was chairman of the committee until he stood down in November last year after he called for an investigation into the expenses allegations made against him.

He was ordered to repay £28,000 because he used the second-home allowance to fund a cottage in his Skipton and Ripon constituency even though he hardly ever stayed the night there between July 2005 and March 2009.

You can read the full story here.

Helen Flynn is the Liberal Democrat candidate for Skipton and Ripon: information and contact details here.

The Evening Standard has won a significant victory in a High Court libel battle brought by a Conservative MP.

Jacqui Lait, MP for Beckenham, had sued over an article headlined “Women MPs will be put off by Kelly reforms”.

Mr Justice Eady today struck out elements of her claim and ordered her to pay £10,400 legal costs.

The November 2009 article correctly pointed out Ms Lait had claimed “large sums” to travel to her family home in Sussex even though her constituency home is only 11 miles from Westminster…

The judge said it was “unreal to suggest that readers of the Evening Standard would not think the worse of an MP who had taken advantage of (or “milked”) the expenses system simply because he or she had stayed within the letter of the law.”

Kitty Ussher used allowances for £20,000 house make-over
The records reveal that Miss Ussher, the MP for Burnley, contacted the Commons fees office within 12 months of being elected, with a detailed programme of work for the property she had already lived in for five years.

Kitty Ussher sacked from government over her claims
Move comes in the face of evidence that Treasury minister ‘flipped’ her homes to avoid paying capital gains tax.

So, when interviewed by Channel 4, what did she say?

Q. Is there anything you did that you feel you ought to say sorry for? The choices you made? The decisions you made?

A. No. Because I haven’t done anything that anybody else in my position wouldn’t be perfectly able and valid to do.

The exchange comes around 8 minutes 15 seconds in to this report:

Gordon Birtwistle is the Liberal Democrat candidate in Burnley. Find out how you can help his campaign here.

At the end of the detailed, albeit censored claims, provided on the Parliamentary website, is an invoice to the tune of £1,654 for “delivery of a leaflet in Hull North Constituency during September and October 2007″.

Looks legit doesn’t it? However there’s is an oddity about it. You see, there appears to be no such company as J W Shipley Distribution, either solvent or dissolved, listed on Companies House. An advanced search for all companies with “Shipley” also throws up nothing. Curious!

There is, however, an “independent” member of Humberside Police Authority called John Shipley who happens to be a local Labour Party activist in Hull, who also stood for the Labour Party in Hull during the 2002 elections.

I tried to contact Mr Shipley yesterday for confirmation that the invoice was from him but as yet have had no response.

So is a Labour MP claiming Parliamentary expenses to pay a Labour member to deliver leaflets? Well, although he may not have responded, I’ve been speaking to Liberal Democrats in Hull who confirm they personally saw Labour activist (and frequent election agent) John Shipley out delivering the leaflets in question.

Rum indeed. Investigations are, as they say, continuing…

Denis Healy is the Liberal Democrat candidate in Hull North. To find out how you can help him, see www.denishealy.org.uk

How many voters are ready to turn against their MP over the expenses scandal? A fascinating battle in a hotly-contested north London constituency looks set to provide some answers.

On one side is Labour whip Dawn Butler. On the other is Lib-Dem MP Sarah Teather. They have been thrown together in a new seat as a result of boundary changes, and there is now a fight to the death to see which one returns to Westminster after the election to represent Brent Central…

What Ms Teather, described as a “saint” by one newspaper for her expenses record, doesn’t say is that Ms Butler was one of the MPs shamed in last summer’s scandal.

Ms Butler has claimed £66,304 since being elected in 2005 for her constituency home in Wembley – despite having another property in Stratford. When the Standard challenged Ms Butler (left) on this by knocking on the door of her (publicly-funded) constituency home, she told our reporter: “I totally resent you coming to my private home. Have some respect. How dare you.”

(For a more detailed explanation of Dawn Butler’s controversial expense claims, including a link to a wonderful BBC TV report on the issue, see my earlier post.)

Of course Dawn Butler is no stranger to The Voice, what with the unfortunate incident of forgetting who your local MP is, the disappearing statement, questions over Dawn Butler’s attendance record in Parliament, not to mention Dawn Butler’s highly unusual approach to local newspapers, as demonstrated more than once.

I think the polite term for this is “accident prone”, though there was also the more serious issue of the Labour smear leaflet which resulted in successful legal action by the Liberal Democrats and Dawn Butler’s record of trying to block reforms to MPs expenses.