John Reid gets over £4000 repaid in expenses refund

Aug 25 2010 by Richard Mooney, Wishaw Press

FORMER Shotts MP John Reid has been refunded over £4000 he repaid last year during the expenses scandal.

The Celtic chairman – who was last month made a life peer in the House of Lords – was refunded £4604.63 of the £7336.51 he had paid back.

A House of Commons spokesperson confirmed that Lord Reid is one of 23 MPs who asked for some of the money they paid back to be returned, after paying back more than Sir Thomas Legg had recommended in his review of over claimed expenses last year. The House of Commons spokesperson explained that MPs were asked if they would required a refund.

Out of the 23 MPs refunded, Lord Reid’s £4604.63 refund sits second highest behind former Tory MP’s Sir John Butterfill’s £15,114.

The former Home Secretary stood down prior to the General Election this year and received over £60,000 of taxpayers’ money to help him adjust to “non-parliamentary life.”

Lord Reid was given a £64,766 resettlement grant after he voluntarily stepped down as an MP, and received the money in addition to his parliamentary pension, with the first £30,000 tax-free.

His expenses last year revealed he had claimed for items such as a £1.50 bar tip, a £139.99 Sony Ericsson Z200 mobile phone, a £89.99 Goodmans microwave oven, a £119.99 Beko fridge, £1.36 for tobacco, £2.58 for Typhoo tea bags, £50 in top-up vouchers, an £89 Pure Evoke digital radio, three gift bags at £2.70, £17.99 for Coffret Guanaja chocolates, a £24.99 Matsui set top box, a £7.99 JVC SCART cable, £3.60 for women’s fashion magazine Harper’s Bazaar, 48p for a Morrisons toilet cleaner, £599.99 for a Panasonic LCD television and £1.50 for a copy of Private Eye.

He also spent nearly £9000 refurbishing his constituency home – £29.99 of which was spent on a black glittery toilet seat.