It turns out that the same MPs who voted for the bedroom tax quite like claiming up to £25,000 a year for their accommodation expenses. Hypocrisy? In politics? Knock me down with a feather.

Scrutiny of data provided by the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority shows that 177 Conservative and Liberal Democrat MPs have amassed claims of up to £25,000 each for accommodation – a staggering £3.2m between them in 2012-13.

The highest claimant was Richard Bacon, MP for South Norfolk, who claimed £25,094 last year – an average of £480 a week. The bedroom tax is a cut to housing benefit for 660,000 families in the UK who have been classed as having a spare bedroom. Almost two-thirds of those homes include somebody with a disability. But the lack of smaller homes for people to move to means that many have no choice but to stay where they are and accept the cut in payment. Meanwhile, the MPs that support the cut claim up to £480 a week in accommodation expenses.

Stephen Barclay, who represents North Cambridgeshire, claimed £24,226 in accommodation expenses before voting for the bedroom tax, despite living less than two hours from Westminster. Richard Fuller, who represents Bedford and Kempston, claimed £18,384 in accommodation expenses – despite his constituency being 40 minutes from central London. Under Department for Work and Pensions guidelines, it is "reasonable" for jobseekers and Joe Public to travel up to an hour each way for work. Liberal Democrat MP Malcolm Bruce was among the highest claimants, claiming £23,057. The conservative MP, Alec Shelbrooke, who once suggested that benefit claimants should receive their payments on a plastic "scrounger card" to restrict where the payments could be spent, claimed £19,996. Esther McVey, the work and pensions minister, who complained that the bedroom tax opposition day debate last week was "too loud", claimed £20,000.

The accommodation expenses claimed by the MPs who voted to keep the damaging tax could pay the bedroom tax for up to 230,000 of those people affected for a year. These were the same MPs jeering in parliament, laughing into the camera as victims of the bedroom tax gave their devastating testimonies of what life was like under the cuts.

Charles Barden killed himself this month over fears that he would be asked to leave his home. The 74-year-old hanged himself after telling friends that he was worried about how he would afford the bedroom tax. He had secretly sold his car and taken a loan out for £1,000 to make ends meet. Stephanie Bottrill walked out in front of a lorry on the M6 in May, after being told to pay an extra £80 a month or leave her home. Single mother Melissa Jones took sleeping pills after receiving a £600 bill – despite begging her local authority for a smaller home.

With the urgent need for social housing in the UK, could I suggest a block of 650 studio flats less than an hour away from Westminster? If you add together all of the accommodation expenses, not just the ones relevant to the bedroom tax vote, as long as it costs less than £7m to build and police, it would be cost-neutral within a year. And instead of £7m spent on MPs' housing claims, we could pay for some security and a maintenance team, and builders, and contractors, and cleaning staff. If my (sadly mythical) block of flats cost less than £136,000 a week to run, it would be cheaper than the current system, and a lot more difficult to exploit. Sometimes, just sometimes, I think I might be a little bit too sensible.