Reading West MP, Martin Salter finally received his letter from Sir Thomas Legg, the former top civil servant, charged with overseeing MPs, allowance claims for the past five years. The letter absolved Mr Salter from any criticisms of his claims and said:-

“[there are no] payments made to you under the ACA during the review period which I consider call for any repayment or further supporting evidence to be provided by you”

However Mr Salter was highly critical of Mr Legg’s review, describing the process as “fundamentally flawed”.

Mr Salter said:-

“It was hardly surprising that Mr Legg found nothing untoward regarding my claims as I have never sought to bill the tax payer for a second home in London.

“I prefer to live and work in my constituency and I am lucky enough to live close enough to be able to do so. This is, of course, not the case for the majority of MPs many of whom, in my view, are facing some quite ridiculous demands to repay five year old cleaning bills”

Mr Salter, who is standing down at the next election, and has been untainted by the expenses scandal told the BBC that it was ridiculous that the Legg review had concentrated on rewriting the rules governing how much a cleaner could be paid whilst ignoring the scandal of millionaires amassing property portfolios at the taxpayers expense.

Mr Salter added:-

“In my view Sir Thomas Legg is missing the big picture, instead of trying to penalise some of my colleagues for having the temerity to pay their cleaners a living wage he should have concentrated his fire on those ‘trust fund toffs’ who are getting the taxpayer to fund not their second homes but their third, fourth or fifth homes. I want to know why some of these multi-millionaire MPs can escape without a shred of criticism, even though they are buying country cottages with taxpayers’ cash”.