Hamilton MP to repay £5314 of expenses

Feb 11 2010 by Alastair McNeill, Hamilton Advertiser

LANARK and Hamilton East MP Jimmy Hood has been ordered to pay back to the taxpayer expenses totalling £5413.

The ruling was made by Sir Thomas Legg in his audit of payments made to MPs for their second homes.

Following last year’s furore over expenses, the retired civil servant was tasked with carrying out the review of claims made under the Additional Costs Allowance.

Mr Hood’s repayment comprises £3783 in overpayments in mortgage interest in the financial years 2004-5 and 2005-06.

It also includes a £1630 claim for March, 2007... which Sir Thomas noticed had been paid out twice.

Three other Lanarkshire MPs - Adam Ingram (East Kilbride), Frank Roy (Motherwell and Wishaw) and Tommy McAvoy (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) - were told last year they do not have to repay anything following the expenses review.

Mr Hood, who did not appeal Sir Thomas’s decision - and has paid back the £5413.49 - this week expressed dismay at the audit’s approach.

He pointed out the date on the ‘duplicate’ March, 2007, claim should have read January, 2007, and the audit had failed to recognise that.

Mr Hood said: “I immediately acted responsibly for wrongly dating the claim, but there was no duplicate claim or overpayment from ACA.

“I was therefore disappointed that having provided him with evidence and explanation proving there was no duplicate payment, Legg decided that wrongly dating a claim justified the demand for payment.”

The MP also said that while Sir Thomas considered that £3783 had been overpaid to him in the financial years 2004-2005 and 2005-2006, he had underclaimed in the years 2006-2007 and 2007-2008.

Mr Hood said: “I invited him to consider years 2006-07 and 2007-08 where I had paid the same amount more in mortgage interest than claimed from ACA. Again Sir Thomas Legg reached his conclusions by defining his remit to look only for overpayments from ACA whilst ignoring overall expenditure over the piece of his review 2004-2008 against claims.”

Last year the Advertiser revealed the extent to which that Mr Hood had enjoyed obtaining public cash. He used expenses to buy two sat navs, including accessories and fitting, valued at £600, a £475 SLR digital camera and a £489 26-inch widescreen TV and a £299 washer drier.

Tax advice from an accountant costing £2625 had also been claimed on his expenses.

In his defence, Hood said he had not ‘flipped second homes or avoided Capital Gains Tax’.

And he added that in the Parliamentary expenses ‘league table’ he was ranked 345th out of 645 MPs and 44th out of 59 Scottish MPs.

Those Lanarkshire MPs who do not have to make repayments to the taxpayer had made a variety of claims under the discredited second homes expenses system.

Tommy McAvoy claimed a whopping £400-a-month on food, £1132 on mortgage interest payments since February, 2005 and, on two separate occasions - January, 2007, and December, 2005 - the cost of a TV licence.

In July, 2006, Frank Roy bought a £750 TV and claimed the money back on expenses.

Adam Ingram had claimed for alarm clocks, a television, crockery and pillow cases.

MP HOOD: expenses payback time.