Mrs Laing, 51, and her then husband Alan, a millionaire businessman, bought the first of the two flats in a complex in Westminster in 1993, four years before she was elected as the MP for Epping Forest in Essex. Land registry documents do not disclose how much she and Mr Laing paid, but other flats in the same building were sold for around £300,000 at the same time. In July 2002 – when the couple had their first child – they bought the flat next door for £465,000, and made them into one large property.