Nadine Dorries claims allowance 'counted as part of MP's salary'

The high-profile Tory MP has faced questions over her parliamentary expenses after admitting she only spends free weekends and holidays in the property she designates as her main home.

She was forced to apologise to her constituents for keeping the location of the house a secret.

Today, however, she claimed that the £24,222-a-year additional costs allowance (ACA) - at the centre of the expenses scandal disclosed over the last 15 days by The Telegraph - has "always been known and has always been counted as part of an MP's salary".

"This is always done quietly," she admitted, before suggesting that it did not even matter what the ACA money - the use of which has caused so much public anger in the wake of the Telegraph disclosures - was spent on.

"It has always been the way it has been done and everyone knows that," she said.

"The ACA was a lump sum of money... MPs were told to use that money because it wasn't expenses, it was an allowance in lieu of having pay rises.

"Actually what it was spent on is possibly even regardless because the principle is that lump sum of money, particularly for the old guard of MPs, we told that's your due."

Miss Dorries has claimed that MPs are close to "cracking" following the disclosures about their expenses.

The Daily Telegraph has disclosed that Miss Dorries had designated a house she rents in her constituency of Mid-Bedfordshire as her “second home” for the purposes of her expenses, even though she sleeps there during the week and her daughter attends a nearby school. She has claimed more than £18,000 in rent on the property.

The former nurse used her internet blog to rebut any suggestion that the house was in fact her “main home”, but would say only that she spent some of her free time at an unspecified “other” address.

At the time, The Daily Telegraph was led to understand that this was her mother’s house, in the Lancashire town of Lytham St Annes. However, on Saturday, Miss Dorries, a divorced mother-of-three, blogged again, disclosing that the “other” home was in fact a rented property near her former marital house in the Cotswolds.

The youngest of her daughters lives with her during the week in Bedford and the pair sometimes go to the Cotswolds at the weekend.

She eventually apologised to her constituents, saying that she had “hoped that I could retain some of my private life” but adding that this had become “impossible”.

“By trying to protect my girls and keeping the circumstances of my marriage break-up private I realise that I am in fact arousing suspicion,” she said.

“So, to my constituents and no one else, I am sorry. My crime is that I haven’t owned up to you that I don’t always live here – that I have a private life, which has not always run smoothly.”