Well, Mrs James does indeed admit to having rented a flat from Mr Geraint Davies up until sometime in 2006. She further claims that she then moved to a cheaper area of London and reduced her annual rent from £19,000 to £13,000.
Hmmmm....well according to the figures obtained by the Daily Telegraph and reported in full on the BBC website, Mrs James claimed £21,070 under the "second home allowance" in 2007/8. Assuming that her annual rent was roughly equal to the reported £13,000 in 2006/7 then in addition to her rent, she claimed a further £8,000 under the second home allowance.
What was this for? Why would it cost another £8,000 per year to live somewhere AFTER the rent had been paid? Indeed, when compared with Swansea's other two MPs, Mrs James' claim looks even more excessive. In the same year (2007/8) as Mrs James calimed £21,070, neighbouring Gower MP Martin Caton claimed £13,022 in second home allowances and Alan Williams, Father of the House and MP for Swansea West claimed only £5,221.
Mrs James clearly has questions to answer that go beyond whether it was a chocolate Santa or a bag of chocolate coins she claimed on her supermarket expense bill...
Geraint Davies when he was MP for Croydon Central (which he lost in 2005) used his second home allowances to maximise his personal benefit and ended up with his family home AND a flat nearer to Westminster yet only 8 miles from his main home! And all this after claiming THE MOST if any MP in expenses totalling £176,026 on top of his salary in just one year!
No wonder he was such a whizz in making huge amounts of money in his private business affairs (which he found time to do even when in Parliament, despite claiming to be the "hardest working" MP in the House) when he can clearly spot opportunities to maximise his benefits so successfully!
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