The employment minister Mark Hoban has been allowed to keep nearly all of the six figure profit he made on his taxpayer funded second home, it has emerged.
The profit is thought to be one of the biggest profits made by any Government minister from the sales of second homes which have been funded in part through the MPs' expenses system.
MPs were banned the use of Commons expenses to pay mortgage interest in May 2010, in the wake of public fury over “flipping” allowances and other abuses.
However, transitional arrangements allowed them to keep claiming the money up to last August - as long as they returned any capital gain over that period.
Records show that Mr Hoban, 49, sold his property and made a £144,000 profit on the sale of his flat in Pimlico, central London which he bought with his wife Fiona in 2002.
Mr Hoban sold the flat for £393,000 in November last year, after buying it for £249,000 in 2002, giving him and his wife Fiona a £144,000 profit. He was elected as Conservative MP for Fareham in 2001, a year before he bought the London flat.
However, the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority, which regulates MPs’ expenses, only asked him to repay £11,332 – because that was the estimate of increase in value of the property between May 2010 and October last year.
In that same period he claimed £17,247 under the MPs’ allowances system towards the cost of the mortgage.
An Ipsa spokesman said that it could not ask for any further money to be repaid because its jurisdiction only started in May 2010 when it was established.
Telegraph
