Browning claims £9,635 for website

By agreenwood andy greenwood chief reporter

WESTCOUNTRY MP and former Conservative minister Angela Browning claimed almost £10,000 for work on her website and £7,300 on expenses for soft furnishings and decorating her second home in London, it has been revealed.

In the latest round of disclosures on MPs expenses, the Sunday Telegraph reported that Mrs Browning, MP for Tiverton and Honiton, had charged more than £1,000 for installing two radiator covers at her flat in Pimlico.

She was also reimbursed £715 for a new carpet in the master bedroom in March 2006. In November of the same year, she also employed a company to redecorate her kitchen and fit new worktops and a sink at a cost of £2,714.

Bills met by the taxpayer in 2007/08 also included £151 for new curtains, £400 for four made-to-measure pelmets, £849 for sofa covers and £94 on storage boxes. Further decorating costs, this time for the hall in July 2007, reached £1,045.

The taxpayer also picked up the £9,635 tab for starting Mrs Browning's website and running it for two-and-a-half years.

Mrs Browning, a junior agriculture minister in John Major's government, told the Western Morning News that she was "confident" that she had been "responsible" with public money.

"All items on my ACA (Additional Costs Allowance) were in accordance with the rules in the Green Book," she said. "I have been careful to repair whenever possible and have made good dilapidations in a responsible way.

"However, I realise that the public do not believe that the second home should have to be maintained at public expense and to that end I have, since January 2008 restricted my own expenses to those that are in line with the new rules introduced in recent days by the House."

Mrs Browning sold the property for £493,000 in December 2007 and moved to rented accommodation. She stressed that she'd paid "full capital gains tax", on time.

According to the Sunday Telegraph, she had stopped claiming for the cost of her second home when the interest-only mortgage payments of £641 came to an end six months earlier. Mrs Browning, currently away in Italy, told the WMN that she would publish her detailed expenses on her website "as soon as possible".

She said: "I feel quite confident in my own mind that I have been quite responsible, although I have purchased things.

"When my television, which is quite old, went wrong in December 2007, I didn't go out and buy a new plasma television, I had it repaired. When the independent committee come to look at all of my expenses, if for any reason I have not kept to the rules, I will, of course, repay any money, if that is the case.

Commenting on her decision to restrict her expenses, she went on: "Because I am retiring, I decided that because there was growing discussions in Parliament and outside that people found it unacceptable to be claiming maintenance on a second home I moved into a rented flat."

Details of Mrs Browning claims were revealed in the same week as the fallout from revelations about Totnes MP Anthony Steen's expenses resulted in him standing down at the next election. That prompted an instant rebuke from Conservative leader David Cameron who warned Mr Steen that he would be kicked out of the party "so fast his feet won't touch the ground" if he stepped out of line again.