HILARY ARMSTRONG, a former Labour chief whip, used her parliamentary office expenses to pay for a gardener and a tree surgeon at her Durham home.

Armstrong, who uses her home as a constituency office, has charged up to £50 a month for a “gardener/handyman” and tree works costing £188 as part of her £18,621 claim for office expenses. She said yesterday the gardener was mainly paid for “shredding documents”.

Last night there were further embarrassing revelations about how MPs exploited the £21,339-a-year office allowance to claim luxury goods and subsidise the cost of their homes.

Derek Conway, the Tory who was expelled from the party last year for payments to his two sons, tried to claim for a £160 pig skin wallet bought from the luxury Bond Street stationers Smythson, and £165 for a roller-ball pen from a shop in Sloane Square. Although the claims were thrown out, he successfully recouped the cost of a £675 digital camera and a £229 coffee maker. He went on to claim for two further cameras, a satellite navigation system and various luxury furnishings.

Malcolm Bruce, the president of the Scottish Liberal Democrats, claimed thousands of pounds towards the running of both his London flat and his constituency home in Scotland by using part of his property north of the border as an office. Normally MPs can only claim expenses for household bills at their second homes.

According to The Sunday Telegraph Labour backbencher Michael Clapham tried to claim £210 for a pair of glasses for his wife Yvonne, who works as his assistant; while Tom Levitt, a former ministerial aide, tried to claim £16 for a Remembrance Day wreath. He now says this was a mistake and that the fees office was “quite right to reject” the claim.

Chris Huhne, the Liberal Democrat MP who has also published his expenses online, paid a £500 excess fee on a libel and slander insurance policy. He also paid £85.35 for “mounting, framing and inscription of photo of Chris Huhne”.

John Grogan, the MP for Selby in North Yorkshire, claimed £150 for lessons at the Rose of York language school in London, which teaches English to overseas students. Grogan said the lessons were for an intern from Mongolia who spoke little English and was struggling to understand the Yorkshire accents in his office.

Tony McNulty, the employment minister, has not yet provided a breakdown of his claim for office expenses. He has said he paid £12,600 for a second home where his parents lived so he could use it as a place to work at weekends.

But the records show he also claimed £17,892 for the running costs of another office in Harrow, just a short stroll from his constituency home. He declined to comment.

Revelations about abuses of the second home allowance also continued to emerge. Angela Smith, a Labour backbencher, bought four new beds for a one-bedroom flat in the space of two years, while Andrew Smith, Labour MP for Oxford East, spent £30,000 on a makeover for his London home. Bizarrely, his receipts suggest many of the purchases were made in his Oxford constituency and the work carried out by Oxfordshire-based builders. He even claimed 50p for an Ikea carrier bag.

Quentin Davies, the former Tory frontbencher who defected to Labour, spent £10,000 taxpayers’ money repairing windows on his country home. Among items claimed for was insurance for antiques at the 18th-century mansion.

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