Jacqui Lait over-claimed on second home mortgage for three years

Conservative MP Jacqui Lait during Beckenham by-election

Between October 2003 and December 2006, Jacqui Lait consistently claimed more MPs' expenses than she should have done on the monthly mortgage interest on her flat in her constituency of Beckenham, Kent.

In 2007 she was asked to produce her mortgage statements for the previous three years and they showed that she had regularly claimed around an extra £200 a month.

Officials calculated that she should have been paid £9,868 for mortgage interest but actually claimed £16,975 and subsequently owed the fees office £7,106.

In a letter accompanying her cheque in August 2007, Mrs Lait wrote: "I am grateful to you for spotting this error so that I can correct it."

The MP's main home is in Rye, where she lives with her husband Paul, the leader of East Sussex County Council.

Yesterday, she said she had not noticed that she had been claiming the wrong amount. "My mortgage on the Beckenham flat was a fixed rate one," she said. "I had also decided to repay the capital as fast as possible to reduce the cost to the taxpayer of interest.

"For the years quoted, as my monthly mortgage payments never varied, I made the mistake of claiming the same interest cost, not noticing that these costs were reducing as the repaid capital increased. Luckily, the fees office spotted it and alerted me. I asked them to work out how much I needed to repay and was happy to pay it back it quickly, once they had worked it out."

Mrs Lait stepped down as shadow planning minister in January and returned to the back benches "at her own request".

In the MPs' expenses dossier seen by The Daily Telegraph, she also claimed £160 for saucepans, £225 for a bookcase and £214 for a chair.

"I bought the desk chair to help my posture when working from the flat. From time to time I have a painful back and prevention is better than cure," she said.

"Once the bookcase in my flat, which I had wholly furnished from my own resources, was full, I was lucky enough to be able to purchase a bookcase from constituents who were selling it.

"It was valued at £400 and I was able to purchase it substantially more cheaply. It is also useful because it has a cupboard to hold stocks of parliamentary headed notepaper and envelopes for when I work from my flat."

SNAPSHOT

Jacqui Lait

Job: backbench Conservative MP for Beckenham

Salary: £64,766

Total second home claims

2004-05: £17,958

2005-06: £21,222

2006-07: £15,301

2007-08: £15,478