Shailesh Vara claimed £1,500 for costs incurred before he was elected to Parliament

Shailesh Vara seen here with Baroness Thatcher

Shailesh Vara lodged invoices for mortgage interest payments, council tax and cleaning services that covered part of 2005 when he was not yet an MP.

He then used his parliamentary expenses to refurbish his second home – owned solely in the name of his wife – before selling it for a £150,000 profit and buying a £1.2 million house near Westminster. Mr Vara, a solicitor, was a vice-chairman of the Conservative Party before he was elected to represent the seat of North West Cambridgeshire in May 2005.

A year later he submitted an expenses claim, comprising 18 pages, for living costs totalling £22,600.51, after nominating a house in Lewisham, south-east London, as his second home.

However, the Commons fees office noticed that some of the claims related to the first few months of 2005 – before he was elected to Parliament.

His mortgage interest payments were reduced by £1,174.13 as a result, his council tax claims by £139.85 and his cleaning bills by £218 – a total reduction of £1,531.98.

A Commons official wrote on Mr Vara's forms: "Claim reduced – claiming before being a member!"

His file shows that concern was also raised about the fact that only the MP's wife, Beverley Vara, was named on the mortgage statements for the Lewisham home. Rules would have prevented Mr Vara claiming mortgage interest payments on a property that he did not own.

He wrote back to the fees office: "Due to a misunderstanding on the part of our solicitor, he drafted the contract and other documentation only in my wife's name."

Mr Vara was allowed to carry on claiming on the Lewisham property as he said he and his wife were about to buy a new flat nearer to Parliament.

He was reimbursed £140 for removing rubbish from the old house as well as £1,320 for painting the kitchen and bathroom ceilings, repairing cracks in the walls and floorboards, putting up new curtains and fitting child safety gates. The following year he claimed £14,173 for mortgage interest on his Lewisham home.

In February 2007, he and his wife sold the house, which they had bought in July 2003 for £320,000, for £470,000.

They went on to buy a four-storey town house in central London for £1.2 million and, after naming it as his second home he claimed £6,264 on the new mortgage.

Since then he has only claimed for mortgage interest payments, totalling £22,839.

Earlier this month, Mr Vara told his local paper that he had nothing to hide. In a statement last night, he said: "It is not true that I attempted to claim for the wrong period.

"I put the correct dates on the claim form but did not pro-rata the bills and the fees office then correctly did the pro-rata exercise and the correct amount was paid to me.

He added, "The house was our matrimonial home and the name on the deeds and bills does not alter the reality that the ownership, responsibility and payments were joint.

"Necessary repairs of £1,320 fourteen months before sale can hardly be said to generate a windfall in the sale price, whilst the purchase of the second property was certainly not dependent on any previous claims."