EXPENSES ROW: MP Jim Knight claimed £900 life insurance (From Dorset Echo)

EXPENSES ROW: MP Jim Knight claimed £900 life insurance

9:49am Friday 11th December 2009 in

• Skip social links
• Print
• Email
• Comments(18)

SOUTH Dorset MP Jim Knight has had to repay over £900 in wrongfully claimed parliamentary expenses for life insurance.

Receipts published online for the first time yesterday showed Mr Knight submitted an expenses form in May that included a payment to insurers Friends Provident.

He said the form was returned to him with a handwritten note next to the claim for £36.41, saying: ‘Life ins? Not allowable. To be looked into further, re: previous claim’.

Mr Knight said that after he was told he could not claim for life insurance he wrote a cheque for over £900, payable to Parliament, to repay around three years’ worth of monthly life insurance claims he had made.

He was also able to claim for his TV licence up until June of this year.

Mr Knight – who earns more than £100,000 a year – said he submitted the claims because having a life insurance policy was a condition of him getting a 100 per cent mortgage on his ministerial flat in London.

He added: “It was deemed that this was something I was not able to claim for and I have since repaid the amount to Parliament.

“I can’t recall the exact figure but it would have been at least £900 I would have had to repay.”

Mr Knight said he repaid it in May or June of this year.

He added that he claimed the expenses because he saw it as part of his overall mortgage claim, adding: “I felt it was part of the deal for my second home.

“It was an expense I would not have had to claim if I did not have to have a second home in London.”

Mr Knight has an MP’s salary of £63,291 but he receives an additional £39,893 as a minister – a total of £103,184.

Mr Knight’s expenses paperwork for the first quarter of this financial year also showed he has claimed £105 for washing machine repairs and has had a claim for £25 towards a phone bill refused.

Mr Knight has come under fire for making the life insurance expenses claims. The deputy chairman of Weymouth and Portland Residents Association, Eric Alley said he had to pay for his own life insurance when he owned a flat in London while working for the Home Office.

He added: “Everybody’s had to go through these things but not everybody would think that they could put in a claim for that.

“Jim certainly shouldn’t have claimed that in the first place, but it goes in his favour that he has now paid it back.”

The Taxpayers’ Alliance said that Mr Knight was wrong to try and claim the money for life insurance.

Spokesman Matthew Elliott said: “Having life insurance is a luxury of personal benefit to your family, not something essential to doing the job of an MP at all.

“So there is no way he should have asked taxpayers to pick up this bill.

“It may be the case that the bank refused to give him a mortgage without one, but in that case he should have rented or looked for a more affordable property.”

Liberal Democrat parliamentary candidate for South Dorset Ros Kayes said she felt Mr Knight’s claim was ‘borderline.’ She added: “It’s not like MPs paying to have duck houses in the middle of their ponds or having the pipes underneath their tennis courts repaired.

“I would say this would have been more difficult for him to judge.”

Mrs Kayes added that it was the kind of expense MPs should ‘pay more attention to’ from now on.

Conservative parliamentary candidate for South Dorset, Richard Drax, said: “I really have nothing to say about this other than I’m just getting on with my job and I’m looking forward to the day of the next general election.”