5. Extract from article in the Daily
Telegraph, 28 May 2009
MPs' expenses: Julie Kirkbride "considering
stepping down" over taxpayers' cash scandal
Julie Kirkbride, the Conservative MP, is considering
standing down after it was disclosed that she had used her MP's
expenses to fund a £50,000 extension to her constituency
flat for her brother.
...
It came days after she admitted her brother lived
in constituency home rent free and she employed her sister to
do constituency work from a house 125 miles from her Bromsgrove
seat.
...
Mr Mackay, 59, and Ms Kirkbride, 48, have claimed
a total of £170,000 in expenses for second homescovering
both their propertiesover the past four years.
...
Miss Kirkbride was granted permission by the parliamentary
Fees Office to increase her taxpayer-funded mortgage to build
an extra bedroom.
Despite her insisting that the taxpayer faced no
extra costs over her brother staying rent-free in her constituency
home, the arrangement added an extra £250 a month to her
expenses.
...
In a radio interview, she said it never crossed her
mind that she was doing anything wrong by claiming taxpayers'
money to part-fund the extension.
...
Writing in the Times,
she said: "I'm not
looking for sympathy." But she added:
"Because of the
size of our home in Bromsgrove, [her son]
had been sharing a bedroom with his uncle. We felt that, as a
growing boy, he'd soon want his own spaceso we needed to
remortgage to build another bedroom.
"I've laid out these details to show my constituents
and everyone else why I have involved my family in my professional
arrangements. It's not about profit."
According to copies of documents seen by the Daily
Telegraph, Ms Kirkbride told the parliamentary
authorities last year that she needed an extra bedroom to house
her "growing family".
She was therefore given permission to increase her
mortgage by £50,000, leaving the taxpayer to pay the higher
interest costs on the loan. However, it emerged that her brother,
Ian, lived at the flat and did not pay rent. Her family had not
increased in size since 2000.
Ms Kirkbride said the "arrangement"
had "no
cost to the taxpayer" but that claim
was undermined when she admitted that she claimed for the costs
of building the extra bedroom so that her brother and son did
not have to share a room.
...
28 May 2009
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