Appendix 4: Letter from Bill Wiggin MP
to the Chair of the Committee
Thank you for your letter. I very much appreciate
your promise of confidentiality, this is not something that the
Commissioner could do and has made things very difficult for me
at home, as some bills are in my wife's name.
This was exacerbated by the activities of my constituent,
Mr Miller, who is a BBC writer, through the Daily Telegraph and
letters in my local press. I enclose the leaflet Mr Miller distributed
during the Election.[140]
The Commissioner was kind enough to confirm that the allegations
in his leaflet are untrue as I was not the only MP being investigated.
However this kind of smear is the reason why my wife has had reservations
about disclosure.
Thanks to your confidential protection she now feels
able to release some bank statements which are in our joint name.[141]
I would have preferred you to have seen these earlier but I have
always sought to protect my family as much as possible. I now
have my wife's permission to show them to you.
Council Tax
The bank statements confirm that I was spending £241
on council tax.
Utilities
You will see that while I was claiming £240
for all my utilities, in fact I paid my supplier Atlantic £286
each month for Gas and a further £187 for Electricity. Water
was £42.83 (for ten months only).
This makes a total of £515.83 per month.
Like many people I do not check my meter readings
as often as I should. This means that this large series of payments
were reduced in later years which might have misled the commissioner
into believing that my real costs were lower.
I believe that my costs for utilities for my house
in London are between £250-350 per month and were always
in that bracket since I have been an MP.
I have more recent statements showing that the direct
debits fell and then rose and I have provided them although it
is outside the period in question.
Telephone
I enclose telephone bills for this period these show
that I was paying well over £400 pounds even in August 2004
(£596).[142]
Maintenance
It has been impossible to provide receipts for redecorating,
electrical or plumbing work. We insisted on proper receipts for
large bills but six years ago we paid cash for smaller jobs.
I remember two men painting and decorating the interior
rooms of my house. They charged about £300-500 per room but
I do not have written evidence and we paid them in cash.
When we bought our house in London it was clear that
I would have to spend time and effort maintaining it and I used
the allowance to help pay for maintenance. You are welcome, as
a committee, to visit and see what has been done. You will see
that we spent far more than £240 per month on maintenance.
It is worth pointing out that while it is impossible
to produce maintenance receipts, the taxpayer will get back any
capital gains on my London house and therefore keeping it in good
repair is responsible.
I have produced all the evidence that you requested
and that I can find going back a considerable time. All the claims
were approved by the fees office. I hope this helps to confirm
that the balance of probability is that I have spent more than
I claimed.
While I am willing to apologise to you fully for
my poor administration. I regret that my records have not been
kept to the standard of scrutiny that in retrospect they should
have been but I am in no doubt that I have not made any personal
profit from the allowances that I claimed under the rules that
prevailed at the time.
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