BRITISH PRIME minister Gordon Brown led a counter-attack on a Westminster expenses system in need of urgent reform yesterday after finding himself in the middle of collective cabinet embarrassment over ministerial claims made under the controversial MPs' "second home" allowance.
House of Commons authorities, meanwhile, asked police to investigate the possibly criminal leaking of details of MPs' expenses to the Daily Telegraph while Conservatives, Liberal Democrats and members of the smaller opposition parties joined Labour backbenchers in nervous anticipation of further disclosures over the weekend.
Former home secretary Charles Clarke wrote to Commons speaker Michael Martin urging him to bring forward the July publication of MPs' corrected receipts to counter what he described as the newspaper's "venal intention . . . to hold parliament to ransom". In an editorial accompanying a first instalment of a nine-page expose, the Telegraph rejected any suggestion of party-political bias, accusing MPs of all parties of complicity "in what amounts to an officially sanctioned and sustained abuse of public funds".
While attention was focused on repairs to John Prescott's toilet seat and food bills by other MPs including claims for tampons and chocolate bars, public indignation was fuelled by the discovery ministers such as Peter Mandelson and David Miliband were claiming against the cost of their gardeners. The death-knell for the second-home allowance will be the evidence of MPs maximising the benefit, as the newspaper put it, to spend tens of thousands furnishing and renovating homes in which their families reside.
The prime minister released a contract for the cleaning of his former London flat after it was revealed his share for a joint arrangement was "paid" to his brother. Downing Street said there was nothing unusual about reimbursing the brother, who paid the cleaner directly. Mr Brown also changed the designation of his second home before moving into 10 Downing Street, while Alistair Darling changed his main home designation four times in four years.