The Ham&High reporting team visited MPs this week to view their receipts. Among them were some particularly eyebrow-raising findings:
The Ham&High reporting team visited MPs this week to view their receipts. Among them were some particularly eyebrow-raising findings.
Lynne Featherstone
Item: Dyson Vacuum cleaner
Cost: �239.99
Item: Paper Folding Machine
Cost: �549.99
Explanation: "To fold letters to constituents from my Parliamentary office. I do signing in batches and usually several hundred letters in one go. It is more time efficient for them to be mechanically folded - increasing the time for my office has to deal with other enquiries from constituents."
Item: Walkie Talkie
Cost: �69.95
Explanation: "My office is upstairs in a pub and the pub staff were getting cross about coming upstairs to get us."
Item: House plants
Cost: �59.96
Explanation: "Someone thought it would brighten the office but I suppose they could have bought it themselves."
Frank Dobson
Item: Diary (annually)
Cost: �38
Explanation: "It is just a nice diary."
Evolution Synchotask Chair
Cost: �189.99
Item: Tin of shortbread
Cost: �0
Explanation: "The only thing I came across was a receipt for small office equipment which also said a tin of shortbread.
"I thought, 'Oh god we haven't been buying tins of shortbread,' but I looked at the money column and there was nothing paid. It must have been that the company who supplied the office equipment supplied us with a free tin."
Karen Buck
Item: Two domed "gents" and "ladies" signs for the office toilets
Cost: �3.95 each
"Volunteers at the constituency office kept getting confused over which one to use."
Rudi Vis
Olympus Digital Camera
Cost: �249.89
"The taxpayer only pays us for things used in the constituency and the camera is for the office there sometimes it is necessary for planning issues and things like that."
Glenda Jackson
Item: Pack of 10 plastic vending cups
Cost: 79p
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