Taxpayer funds home for friend of minister Paul Goggins

'I do not have an extravagant lifestyle but I do have reasonable standards,' Mr Goggins said.

Mr Goggins shares the house in south-east London with Chris Bain, who is the director of the Catholic aid charity Cafod and a friend since university.

They have lived together for the past 11 years. For the past three years, Mr Goggins, the MP for Wythenshawe and Sale East, has designated the property as his “second home” and claimed almost £45,000 in expenses for it. He did not tell the Commons fees office that he shared it.

Mr Goggins claimed for the entire £600 a month mortgage interest, annual council tax and utility bills.

He said Mr Bain, who earned £76,000 a year, had contributed to the costs between 1998 and 2003, when they were not met by taxpayers. After being approached by The Telegraph yesterday, the men said the arrangement was no longer appropriate and they would repay a large amount based on a “thorough assessment” of how many nights Mr Bain stayed there.

In February 2008, Mr Goggins paid Mr Bain £3,829 for the installation of a new kitchen in the house. They said that the money had then been given to Mr Bain’s brother, Don, who carried out the work.

Don Bain’s wife, Julie, said that while her husband “knows how to fit a kitchen”, he was a taxi driver. Mr Goggins said: “On reflection it would have been more transparent had I paid Don directly”.

Mr Bain said: “It was all legitimate but with hindsight we shouldn’t have done this”.

Mr Goggins sat on the board of Cafod until June 2003 and was Charities Minister in 2005-06, when the size of Cafod’s government grant rose by nearly a third to £5.7 million. It dropped by a fifth the following year when Mr Goggins moved to the Northern Ireland Office but he said yesterday that he had no role in the funding of Cafod, which dealt primarily with the Department for International Development.

Between 2003 and 2006, Mr Goggins designated a house in Salford, Greater Manchester, that he shared with his wife Winifred, as his second home – ministers were required at the time to have their main home in London – and claimed about £56,500 in expenses, including £2,800 for a set of “fine leather” sofas.

He changed his second home designation when the rule was lifted. Mr Goggins said his London claims “paid for replacements for items that were broken or worn out”.

“I do not have an extravagant lifestyle but I do have reasonable standards,” he said.