Kelvin Hopkins MP - The odd man out.

Kelvin Hopkins, the Labour MP whose constituency borders Margaret Moran’s claims just a fraction of the available second-home allowance by taking the train to Westminster from his home town.

Mr Hopkins, whose home is by coincidence in the same Luton street as Miss Moran’s, joins the thousands of commuters who take the Thameslink service from Luton to London each weekday morning, rather than maintaining a property near the Commons at taxpayers’ expense .

The Labour MP for Luton North submits claims occasionally for rooms at inexpensive hotels, and prefers to return home to Bedfordshire at night.

The only other expense he claimed since 2005, were two food bills for a total of £36.45. He could have received £4,800 a year for meals without submitting receipts.

In 2004-05, Mr Hopkins’s entire Additional Cost Allowance bill came to just £296. His frugal approach to Commons expenses contrasted sharply with that of Miss Moran, who spent £13,796 of public funds on running a second home in the same year.

He added: “The rules are clearly nonsense but even if they are nonsense, they shouldn’t be abused.”

Mr Hopkins, 67, a former trade union activist, has commuted from Luton to London since he was first elected in 1997. He said he never considered buying or renting a flat in the capital. “I do find it tiring but it works for me,” he said. “I live about a mile from the station so I drive there or get a taxi.

“When I come home it means that I can check through all my letters and see my staff, and I can be here for anything in the constituency.”

Mr Hopkins, a lifelong socialist, added: “The system is ridiculous. I have signed an Early Day Motion calling for the nationalisation of all second homes. If the state owned flats and rented them out to MPs, there wouldn’t be any problems about second home allowances or switching homes from one place to another and you wouldn’t have these problems with capital gains tax.”

**Just when it looks like every single MP is deserving of being hauled out and strung up from a makeshift gallows, you find an honest one. Guess on occasions that needle in a haystack does turn up.

He had best be careful, Sir Thomas More was an honest man and look how his boss rewarded his honesty!

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