New Labour expense scum: Ann Keen MP & Alan Keen MP

A husband and wife who are both MPs have used £175,000 of taxpayers’ money to help buy a flat near Parliament – while they already have a constituency home nine miles away.

Health minister Ann Keen, 59, and her husband Alan, 70 - who have been nicknamed Mr and Mrs Expenses - bought an apartment on the South Bank of the Thames using their generous second homes perk.

They also took out life insurance policies worth £430,000 and claimed back the £867.57 a month premiums on their expenses.

The couple bought the flat, in a block with its own swimming pool and gym, under rules that allow MPs to spend £23,083 a year to run and furnish a home near the Commons.

They qualified for the handout because they live outside inner London. Yet the Keens’ home is actually in Brentford, West London - about 30 minutes away by car.

The details were revealed in documents after a three-year freedom of information battle in which Commons Speaker Michael Martin lost his bid to keep a breakdown of MPs’ expenses secret.

Ten days ago the High Court ruled he must publish details of claims made under the additional costs allowance by 14 current or former MPs.

Mrs Keen, who represents Brentford and Isleworth, and Mr Keen, who is Labour MP for neighbouring Feltham and Heston, already effectively receive double the expenses of other MPs because they share a property.

But the manner in which they bought another home near the Royal Festival Hall will raise eyebrows yet again about the Commons expenses regime.

The couple bought the flat in May 2002 after spending six months in a London hotel.

In a letter to the Commons’ Fees Office informing officials of their changed circumstances, the Keens wrote: ‘Despite some advantages of hotel accommodation, overall we found it unsatisfactory and have borrowed…to purchase a flat within walking distance of Westminster.’

In an unusual arrangement, they used two mortgages. One loan was for £350,000 from HSBC. The other £170,000 was raised by re-mortgaging their property in Brentford, also through HSBC.

The couple argued that because the second home loan was used to raise equity for the central London flat it should be permissible on expenses.

This was apparently nodded through by officials. The property would almost certainly now be worth at £800,000, according to experts.

As well as the interest payments on their mortgage, the couple claimed £867.57 a month for ‘compulsory’ life insurance premiums attached to the home loans - a practice which has since been banned.

According to the documents, they never submitted a single receipt. Instead, they sent two sheets of A4 to the expenses department every month, claiming £1,643.50 each month throughout 2002-03 and £1,699 each throughout 2003-04 - almost the maximum payable.

In the five years since they bought the apartment, Mrs Keen has claimed £87,325 under the second homes allowance and Mr Keen has received £87,803 - a total of £175,128.

In the last year for which figures are available, the pair claimed a total of £38,515 under the ACA, which covers mortgage interest, service charges, utility and food.

If they had each separately taken the £38 taxi ride from Westminster to Brentford on every Commons ‘sitting day’ that year, the bill would have only come to £11,000 - £27,000 less.

There is no suggestion the couple broke the rules. However, their case will intensify pressure for reforms of the way MPs pay themselves expenses.

Critics claim they lived so near to the Commons they should only be able to claim the London supplement of £2,700.

The housing allowances system is now under review.

A Department of Health spokesman stressed the Keens’ claims were within the rules.

But Matthew Elliott, of the Taxpayers’ Alliance campaign group, said they were ‘unacceptable’.

‘The allowance should help MPs represent their constituencies, not pay the costs of life insurance or enable them to build up a lucrative property portfolio.’

The ACA documents also revealed taxpayers picked up the bill for Tony Blair’s interest-only £297,000 mortgage on his constituency home - amounting to almost £4,000 in 2005-06.

**Remember that the next day when you have to wonder quite how you can afford to fill the car with petrol to get to work, or struggle to pay ever rising utility bills out of your static wages.

This pair of amoral fuckers, claim back the monies paid out on their life insurance. So we the hard put upon taxpayers are funding that. Also quite what the score is with sending in some A4 paper as expenses, I am sure that should we attempt to do that to say HM customs they would reject our attempt to defraud them.

Add to that they get the utility bills, food and all the other stuff that we have to pay for covered and you can see how being a Labour MP is a cushy number, but remember that as the one eye'd leader said they "feel your pain"

I am sure that with all their living expenses covered, along with travel and anything else this greedy pair of overpaid hogs can get, they barely need to touch their huge inflation busting salaries, add to that a cushy pension on top and I am sure that they really can relate to the working man and woman who struggles to survive each week.

Let us just hope that in time the serfs of Brentford and Isleworth and the proles of Feltham and Heston tire of doffing their cap as these latter day fudal lords and ladies patronise them from on high and instead throw them out of their cushy jobs come the next election.

Ann Keen I shall describe as an overpaid sow, whilst her husband Alan I shall describe as an overpaid boar. Pigs by nature they are and pigs they shall be known as from now on.

I wonder how many operations in the NHS could have been carried out on the monies pissed up against the wall over the years, monies wasted in paying this pair of cunts.Here we see both of these MP's busy loading up on freebies thanks to us taxpayers, whilst Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg a greedy hog of an MP himself can be seen in the background.

Their main arguement is that what they have done is legal, yet it should not be. It is not right in a moral sense. Consider that a business person - we hear the argument that MP's should get market rates of pay - has to fund all their expenses themselves, sure they can claim some back off the tax but should they be found telling lies the tax will be down on them like a ton of bricks.

Besides many business folk I know would love to get a fraction of the perks that MP's pick up from the taxpayers.

Also ulike business folk, it could be argued that MP's employ no one, except some family/friends again at high cost to us, create no jobs, produce no goods, generate no trade, produce little in the way of monies for UK Plc in fact are a drain on this nations wealth, create nothing but hot air whilst demanding all the perks of industry leaders.

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