I have been investigating the finances of my local MP James Duddridge and these are my findings:

Back in 2005 he became the MP for Southend East and lived in a property which he bought back in 2001.  As soon as he became an MP he started to claim expenses from the taxpayer to pay off the interest rates of the mortgage at a monthly sum of £873.  He also took little time in claiming £6619 to get the premises redecorated.  Realising that he could get a house for free, in 2006 he bought a property for which he straight away started claiming £1585 a month in expenses to pay the mortgage interest payments.  When the expenses scandal broke in 2009 a number of changes occurred to what MPs could claim in regards to accommodation.  Now that it was not possible to get a house for free, Duddridge decided that he would commute from Southend to Parliament even though when I questioned him back in 2009 he told me that it was essential for him to stay in London throughout the week so that he could do his job as an MP effectively.  In the period of 2006-09 he claimed a total of over £53000 in order to purchase the second property.  He has now decided to rent out the two above mentioned properties on a commercial basis.  With the taxpayer contributing to the majority of the payments for the second property you would have thought that an equal percentage of the profit from the rental income he receives would be refunded to the taxpayer.  Of course, this is not the case.  This means that he has turned the expenses that have been paid by the taxpayer to him into a profitable commercial venture.

My question is:  How can this be acceptable?  When the MPs were told to stop claiming unreasonable amounts of taxpayers money via their expenses that did not mean that they could then use what they had gained to make more money.  Surely if what they were doing was wrong then we should get back what they took.

I have, therefore, filed a complaint to the Compliance Officer of the Parliamentary Standards Authority, demanding the correct percentage of the rent Duddridge receives is paid back directly to the taxpayer or the property is sold and the correct percentage of the value of the property is paid back to the taxpayer.

Boo Beckett

Southend-on-Sea