Labour's Golden Couple

Ed Balls and Yvette Cooper have received quite a few mentions on this blog before, but today I can mention them in the same article. It has been common knowledge that this pair of Labour ministers have been using their parliamentary allowances to fund their house purchases and now it has come into the open. Take a read of this article from The Daily Mail; here are the key points:

Ed Balls the Schools Secretary and his wife the Chief Secretary to the Treasury have been accused of 'breaking the spirit or even the letter' of Commons rules by using the allowance to help pay for a new £655,000 home in North London.

"The pair, who represent neighbouring constituencies in West Yorkshire, sold their house in Lambeth, South London, for £545,000 in April and bought a more expensive four-bedroom home in Stoke Newington, North London. Between 1999 and 2005, Miss Cooper had declared another property in Castleford, West Yorkshire, as their second home. By switching to designating the London property as their second home, they qualified for up to £44,000 a year to subsidise a £438,000 mortgage."

The Commons "Green Book" which sets out the rules on MPs' allowances states: "If you have more than one home, your main home will normally be the one where you spend more nights than any other."

"A friend of the pair said that while their three children went school in London, and they spent weeknights in the capital, they genuinely considered the Yorkshire property their main family home."


If this is going to be their defence, that they genuinely consider the Yorkshire home to be their main home, then it is no real defence. The Green Book states "your main home will normally be the one where you spend more nights than any other". Even if they only spend weeknights at the London home and return to Yorkshire every Friday evening they are still spending more nights in London than Yorkshire. So MP spotters, what sightings of Ed Balls and Yvette Cooper do you have on Friday, Saturday and Sunday evenings for the last year?