Further to all the Hazel Blears bed, tv and bath towels scandal that emerged on Friday, now comes news that our well pampered MP didn't pay around £18,000 in tax after selling one of her London properties.
In August 2004 Hazel sold her flat in Kennington for £200,000 making a profit of £45,000. It's alleged that she should have been liable to pay the 40% in Capital Gains Tax for selling a second home, which would have been around £18,000. Her spokesman said that she didn't pay the tax because it was her main home. But in April that year she apparently told the House of Commons Fees Office that it was her second home, enabling her to claim £850 a month on its mortgage
Hazel now `lives' in a flat in Clerkenwell in London but despite claiming thousands of pounds in subsidies for it, the Mail newspaper today writes that not one of the neighbours it spoke to had ever seen her there.
Public feeling against Hazel is mounting – first it was donations from millionaires (and John Wilkinson) to fund her doomed Deputy Leader campaign, then it was Spanish lessons at the taxpayers' expense, and now the bath towel and second homes scandal.
"I have complied with the rules of the House, the rules of the Inland Revenue and that's the situation as it is" says Hazel "But I understand how strongly the public feel about it..."
We don't think she does at all. But if she'd like to face her public on that little stall on Salford Precinct she was on about in The Observer last week we're sure she'll find out…
See Hazel's Expenses Part 3 here
See Hazel's Expenses Part 1 here
