A claim doing the rounds calls this 'fraud.' It isn't — it's entirely legal under current rules. But it's also a genuine, recurring, cross-party story that's been exposed roughly every few years since 2012, and IPSA has repeatedly declined to close it. Here's what's actually true.
Salaries for constituency and Westminster staff, paid directly by IPSA to the employee, not the MP. Capped budget; overspend must be repaid. MPs cannot employ new family members ("connected parties") since 2017.
Office costs
Constituency office rent, business rates, equipment, stationery, and hiring venues for surgeries. A separate, capped budget from staffing.
Accommodation
Rent and running costs (utility bills) for a second home in London or the constituency, capped at £31,840/year in London or £21,680/year outside London (2025/26), plus £7,270 per dependant (up to 3). Mortgage interest has not been claimable since 2010. This is the category at the centre of the story below.
Travel
Public transport, mileage, car hire, or taxis between Parliament and constituency — but only where no reasonable alternative exists, or after 10pm. Hotel and subsistence costs are claimable for nights away from both London and the constituency.
Explicitly NOT claimable
Political party conference attendance, party campaign work, boundary review activity, or anything that could be construed as election campaigning under the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000.
The loophole, explained
The specific arrangement causing controversy: an MP owns a property in London, but instead of living in it, lets it out to a tenant for rental income — while separately claiming IPSA-funded rent (up to the £31,840 annual cap) on a different London property they live in instead. Nothing here breaches the rules. IPSA's own accommodation budget exists precisely to fund MPs having "somewhere to live in London," and the Scheme doesn't require that to be a property the MP happens to own. The controversy is that some MPs end up effectively earning rental income with one hand while the taxpayer funds their own accommodation with the other — a mechanism campaigners describe as a loophole rather than a rule-following coincidence.
Is it fraud?
No. Fraud requires deception or a rule breach — IPSA itself has confirmed this arrangement doesn't breach the Scheme, stating: "We do not want to judge an MP's private arrangements and whether or not they should live in a property they own." Every arrangement described on this page has been openly declared and published in IPSA's own routine disclosure of MPs' business costs, which is precisely how each of the exposés below came to be reported in the first place. Calling this "fraud" is factually inaccurate and risks trivialising what the real, substantiated criticism actually is: a legal loophole that's been repeatedly flagged and never closed, not a crime.
The numbers
17
MPs with this arrangement, most recent count
15 / 2
Conservative / Labour split of those 17
£31,840
Max annual London accommodation claim, 2025/26
£10,000+
Typical rental income each of the 17 earns yearly
Over the past five years, 17 MPs have claimed a combined total of more than £1.3m in taxpayer-funded rent while simultaneously letting out properties they own in London — each earning at least £10,000 a year in rental income on top of their claimed expenses, according to IPSA's own published submissions.
A caution on this figure: a separate, independent Channel 4 News investigation in 2015 found a very similar-sounding total — "£1.3m since 2012" — but for a broader group: 46 MPs who'd claimed London rent or hotel costs despite owning any property in the capital, not specifically MPs letting that property out. Two different investigations, years apart, landing on the same headline number is worth treating with some caution rather than assuming it's one continuously tracked total — it may be coincidence, or it may reflect the newer figure being measured less precisely. The specific mechanism and named examples below are independently confirmed; the exact £1.3m total is the part we'd flag as needing a closer look before treating it as precise.
A decade of the same story
2009
The MPs’ expenses scandal breaks, following the Daily Telegraph’s publication of leaked claims.
2010
IPSA is created and takes over regulating expenses. Mortgage interest claims on second homes are banned outright, specifically to stop MPs profiting from rising house prices at taxpayer expense — but claiming rent remains permitted even if the MP owns another property.
Early 2010s
The BBC finds 22 MPs claiming rent on a taxpayer-funded London home while letting out other properties they own in the capital — we couldn’t independently confirm the exact publication year of this specific report.
2015
A separate Channel 4 News investigation finds 46 MPs claiming London rent or hotel costs despite owning a property in the capital (a broader category than "letting it out"), totalling more than £1.3m since 2012.
2022
The Daily Mail finds 20 MPs with the letting-and-claiming arrangement specifically, including Liam Fox letting his own flat while claiming over £23,000 to rent elsewhere.
2025–2026
The most recent reporting finds 17 MPs with the arrangement, claiming a combined £1.3m over five years — the same headline total as the 2015 investigation, on a different group of MPs and a different period (see the caution note above).
Real examples, both parties
Liam FoxConservative
Former Defence Secretary. Lets his own London flat near Westminster while separately renting elsewhere and claiming over £20,000–23,000 a year, saying he will sell the let flat "eventually."
Anne-Marie TrevelyanConservative
Trade Secretary. Has claimed £106,000 in rental expenses since 2016, while also declaring rental income from a property she owns.
Geraint DaviesLabour
MP for Swansea West. Claimed £68,712 in expenses over three and a half years to rent a London home, while owning and letting out a separate London property worth over £100,000.
Why it hasn't been closed
IPSA has had the legal authority to close this specific loophole since it took over expenses regulation in 2010 — the same reform that banned mortgage interest claims outright shows IPSA is willing to close similar gaps when it decides to. On this one specifically, it has instead taken the position, on record, that judging MPs' private housing decisions isn't its role, provided the claimed costs themselves stay within the Scheme's rules and caps. Sir Alistair Graham, former chair of the Committee on Standards in Public Life, has directly called this position out, describing the findings as "shocking" and arguing IPSA "could stop it overnight" if it chose to.
Reactions
IPSAOfficial position
“We do not want to judge an MP's private arrangements and whether or not they should live in a property they own.”
Sir Alistair GrahamFormer Chair, Committee on Standards in Public Life
“It may be within the rules, but it’s quite wrong for MPs to use the public purse in this way. If there’s an opportunity to end the loophole allowing them to do this, then we must take it.”
NewsDeck's prediction
✍️ ANALYSIS — this section is our own editorial judgement, not a reported fact.
Based on the pattern here — a decade of near-identical exposés, a regulator with the acknowledged power to close this but a stated preference not to, and a slowly declining but never-zero number of MPs using the arrangement — we don't expect this to actually get closed without a change in the law itself, rather than another IPSA review. IPSA has shown it's genuinely willing to close a similar loophole when it wants to (the 2010 mortgage-interest ban proves that), which makes its stance here look like a deliberate choice, not an oversight. Our best guess is this remains exactly what it's been since 2012: a recurring, cross-party embarrassment that resurfaces every few years, gets a round of outraged headlines, and changes nothing structurally.
In the news
Recent coverage tagged to MPs' expenses, pulled automatically from NewsDeck's tracked sources.
Coverage of MP expenses and second homes from our tracked sources will appear here automatically once this page is connected to the topic feed.
This page describes the verifiable facts of MPs' accommodation expenses and a specific, legal loophole — not a claim that any individual has committed a crime. See our Cost of Parliament page for the full picture of what MPs and Parliament cost the taxpayer.