Doug Henderson, Labour MP for Newcastle North, sought more than £800 for landline calls he made in 2007/08 from the house he shares with his wife Geraldine in the fishing village of Anstruther, where he went to school.
The Scottish house is more than 150 miles away from Newcastle and more than an eight hour drive from his second home in London.
When asked about the bills, Mr Henderson said he lived and worked in Anstruther, but was "in Newcastle very regularly, nearly every Friday and some weekends".
He said his presence in Fife was known about in the constituency because the Liberal Democrats "put leaflets out telling everybody".
In an analysis by The Sunday Telegraph, which assessed MPs' value for money based on how much work they did in parliament compared to their overall expenses, Mr Henderson came out as one of the worst for value-for-money.
He attended parliament for about half of all votes, spoke in just eight debates and submitted 23 written questions in 2007/08, but claimed a total of £151,860 in expenses, including travel, home, office and staffing costs.
Mr Henderson, a supporter of Falkirk FC who on Saturday was travelling to the Scottish Cup Final against Rangers, said he was a member of the Council of Europe and the European Security and Defence Assembly, which meant he was "away quite a lot on parliamentary duties".
Mr Henderson served as Defence Minister and Europe Minister, but was sacked from the government by Tony Blair in July 1999 amid a wider purge of supporters of Gordon Brown, then Chancellor. He has not returned to the government since.
Mr Henderson is currently registered on the electoral roll at houses in Newcastle and Anstruther, but his wife is only listed at the Anstruther address.
Asked to explain his decision to spend large amounts of time in Fife, Mr Henderson said: "My son lives in Scotland and I look after some elderly relatives.
"I used to stay with my mother when I was up here. When she died, I had to find somewhere to live."
In 2004/05, Mr Henderson submitted phone bills for four properties under his Incidental Expenses Provision (IEP), designed to cover his office costs.
They were his constituency address, which also serves as his office, in Newcastle; his designated second home in London; the Anstruther address and a fourth property, in Falkland, Fife.
In that year, he successfully claimed for a total of £2,224. His BT phone bill for the two properties in Fife was £325, compared to £1,275 in Newcastle and £624 in London.
In subsequent years, he started claiming just two-thirds of the bills for Anstruther and London, while continuing to seek the full amount for Newcastle.
In 2007-8, his total phone bill for the three properties was £2,630. His London phone bill had fallen to £337 by 2007/08, but his Fife phone bill had increased to £803.
In other claims, he sought £375 under the parliament's Additional Costs Allowance (ACA) to cut trees back at his London address in July 2004, which he said on Saturday had been required to make them safe.
He claimed for mortgage interest payments on his London home on a monthly basis with a payment of £1,236 made in June last year. He said yesterday that he was still paying a mortgage on the property.
Mr Henderson also regularly claimed the full allowance of £400 a month for food with 11 claims in 2006/07 and eight in 2007/08.
"I spent that. It's not difficult in London," he said. "Those were the rules, they are no longer done that way, it's for others to judge."
He has regularly claimed the maximum amount payable under the ACA system which is intended to compensate MPs who have to have a place to stay in London.
However his claims under the Incidental Expenses Provision for office expenses have been among the lowest with his 2007/08 payment of £9,710 putting him in 598th place on a league table of MPs.
He claimed up to £1,320 under his IEP to have his "personal tax affairs" dealt with by an accountant.
He said he had checked with his accountant in the last week and had been told this had been declared as a "benefit in kind" as required.
In March 2006, he paid journalist and broadcaster Farah Khan £1,250 under the IEP for 40 hours work on a parliamentary report.
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