Expenses row intensifies prompting ministers to explain differences in claims amounting to £20,000 in some areas

This article is more than 11 years old

This article is more than 11 years old



Link to Tony Hirst's map

A Guardian project using Google Maps has revealed differences of up to £20,000 in neighbouring MPs' travel expenses.

In north-east England, Labour's David Clelland (Tyne Bridge) claimed £25,019 in travel expenses for 2007-08, while his neighbours, chief whip Nick Brown (Newcastle upon Tyne East and Wallsend) and foreign secretary David Miliband (South Shields), claimed nothing and £4,884 respectively.

On the outskirts of London, Chris Grayling, the shadow home secretary and Tory MP for Epsom and Ewell, claimed £10,105 for travel, significantly more than other MPs living a similar distance from Westminster. His neighbours Edward Davey, the Lib Dem foreign affairs spokesman, who represents Kingston and Surbiton, and Crispin Blunt, the Tory security spokesman and MP for Reigate, claimed £2,004 and £3,123 respectively.

Grayling said the bare figures failed to take into account his duties as a Tory frontbencher. "What you're missing is I'm a member of the shadow cabinet who travels all around the country. At the moment I'm visiting all the police forces in the country.

"Over the last three years I've been shadow transport secretary, shadow work and pensions secretary, and I'm now shadow home secretary."

He added: "These figures are flawed as the House of Commons lumps constituency travel together with extended travel costs, which is travel used by frontbench MPs on fact-finding visits around the country in their role as shadow ministers."

Another outlier was Labour MP Geoffrey Robinson (Coventry North West), whose travel expenses totalled £21,534. Near-neighbours and fellow Labour MPs Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) and Bob Ainsworth (Coventry North East) filed only £4,418 and £3,698 apiece.

Robinson said his expenses were higher than his neighbours for two reasons. "I bought a season ticket for the rail which was £6,000 in one month, and I travel up and down [from Coventry to London] more than they do because I don't live in the constituency."

He added: "It's all justified by receipts for travel."

The MPs' travel expenses data was transformed into an easy-to-read Google Map by Tony Hirst, a lecturer at the Open University and Guardian reader. He picked up the figures from the paper's website as part of Data Store, the Guardian's unique experiment in allowing its readers access to key sets of data.

An anomaly at the other end of the scale was Alex Salmond, the SNP MP for Banff and Buchan, who claimed only £6,170 for travel, despite living 430 miles from Westminster. Salmond spends a lot of his time at the Edinburgh parliament where he serves as Scotland's first minister.

Salmond's situation was made easy to analyse by another reader, Matt Riggott, who organised the list of MPs' expenses according to how far each lived from parliament.