Sir Nicholas and Ann Winterton claim £80,000 on flat held in trust for their children

Expenses submitted by Sir Nicholas show he claimed for £41,508 in rent. His wife’s claims amounted to £41,584.

Since 2002 the Wintertons’ flat in Westminster has been owned by a trust which is controlled by their children.

The decision to pass the property into a family trust was reportedly designed to save hundreds of thousands of pounds in death duties.

The trustees are Sir Nicholas and Lady Winterton, together with the family’s lawyer. For four years the pair submitted rental claims of £900 a month each.

The Commons authorities honoured the claim on all occasions, apart from when an election campaign was under way. Lady Winterton also claimed for more than £1,100 on items including a £67 towel rail, an £18 “toilet brush holder” and a £16.99 “loo handle”.

The claims for 2004-05 to 2007-08 also show that Lady Winterton claimed for £120 of bathroom accessories, a £94 iron and ironing board, and £165 to cover chairs at the flat.

Lady Winterton also submitted claims for nearly £11,000 in service charge bills for the flat. In addition, the couple claimed a total of £11,410 for food. Last night Sir Nicholas said that he and his wife had now moved out of the flat after their arrangement to rent it from their family’s trust had been criticised by the parliamentary Commissioner for Standards last year.

Sir Nicholas said that the arrangement had been agreed with the House authorities in 1998, before the trust was set up in 2002, when there were no rules banning such an arrangement.

He pointed to the commissioner’s report which said that the £900 a month rent claimed by the pair had “made no additional call on public funds as a result of the trust arrangement compared to alternative accommodation”.

Sir Nicholas, Macclesfield’s MP, and his wife, the MP for Congleton, said that they had charged food bills to the taxpayer because Sir Nicholas had come to London on parliamentary business during the summer recess.

Lady Winterton said that the service charge was levied on all residents in the building “covering common parts, the lift, insurance of the building etc”.

She said she had bought an ironing board and iron “as I do most of the laundry myself which saves expense”.

She added: “If I have not completed the ironing of Nicholas’s shirts or the bed linen over the weekend because I ran out of time then I complete the ironing at the flat.

“The board and iron is, therefore, still in use!”

Ann Winterton

Job Backbench MP

2004-05 £18,528

2005-06 £17,765

2006-07 £18,211

2007-08 £20,194

Sir Nicholas Winterton

Job Backbench MP

2004-05 £14,327

2005-06 £13,470

2006-07 £14,797

2007-08 £14,918