The shadow environment secretary, purchased the terrace house in Arundel, West Sussex, less than a year after he became an MP at the last general election.
He and his civil partner, Jason Eades, paid £490,000 for the house in March 2006, taking out a mortgage for almost its entire price.
Mr Herbert claimed back £10,000 of the £14,700 stamp duty, as well as £150 of the valuation fee and £675 for a survey of the property.
Since then he has claimed the entire £1,893.35 monthly interest charge on the house’s £465,000 mortgage, despite his partner’s name also being on the property’s deeds.
The payments, totalling £22,720 a year, use up almost all of his second home allowance. Mr Herbert and Mr Eades, a solicitor, also share a flat in London. In January this year they became civil partners.
The MP, 45, was educated at Haileybury, and Cambridge. Before being elected to Parliament in 2005, he was the chief executive of Business for Sterling and helped launch the campaign against the euro.Between being elected and buying the house in Arundel, Mr Herbert claimed back £10,327.92 in rent on a converted barn in his new constituency. He was selected for Arundel and South Downs just a month before the 2005 election when the sitting MP, Howard Flight, was sacked by Michael Howard, then the leader of the Conservatives, for implying his party had not been honest about its spending plans.
Mr Herbert said: “My partner and I purchased a house in Arundel after I was elected in 2005 and I have claimed for some of the cost in accordance with the rules which treat partners and civil partners in the same way as spouses.”
Nick Herbert
Job: shadow environment secretary
Salary: £64,766
Total second home claims
2004-05: N/A
2005-06: £21,553
2006-07: £22,110
2007-08: £22,720
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