MP expenses hit a high
JUSTICE minister Shahid Malik ran up the highest expenses claim among his MP peers, it emerged yesterday.
He has claimed the maximum amount allowed for a second home – £66,827, over three years. During 2008, he claimed £443 a week for a London town house, or £23,083 over the whole year.
Meanwhile, on his constituency residence in Dewsbury, West Yorkshire, he pays less than £100 per week.
He rents his Yorkshire home, and a constituency office, from the same man – Tahir Zaman – a local landlord who has been fined for letting an uninhabitable house.
Four years before becoming an MP, Malik bought a home in Peckham for £85,000. After he was elected to Parliament in 2005, he gave the property as his “second home” and began claiming the maximum amount available in parliamentary expenses.