Tory leadership hopeful Liz Truss is one of at least seven MPs to charge her Amazon Prime subscription to the taxpayer in the last 18 months, the Sunday Mirror can reveal.
Members of the online retailer’s premium service pay £79 a year to get quicker delivery and enjoy access to TV shows including The Boys, Star Trek: Picard and Jeremy Clarkson ’s The Grand Tour.
Newly released expenses data reveals the Foreign Secretary claimed back the £79 annual charge - though a campaign team source insisted it was not intentional.
Three more Tory MPs - Trade Secretary Anne-Marie Trevelyan, James Gray and Vicky Ford, have also claimed back payments for the subscription service since the start of the Parliamentary session in 2021.
Labour ’s Fleur Anderson and Janet Daby, and SNP MP Angela Crawley also put in claims for Prime.
Most claimed back the charges as a monthly £7.99 subscription fee - but Mr Gray and Ms Truss claimed back the annual fee of £79 as a lump sum.
Mr Gray told the Sunday Mirror his team uses the subscription to have stationery delivered.
“It’s not for dirty movies,” he said. “Although sometimes I wish it were.”
SNP MP Stephen Bonnar also submitted a claim for £7.99, listed as “Amazon Prime”, but he told the Sunday Mirror it was a one-off purchase of stationery, not a subscription charge, and that the value was a coincidence.
Additionally, Environment Secretary George Eustice and Labour’s Mick Whitley submitted claims labelled as “Amazon Prime”, but which have irregular amounts - with Mr Eustice claiming £3.99 and Mr Whitley claiming £47.87.
Perks for members include unlimited next day delivery on many items for no extra charge.
And the subscription includes access to a huge streaming library of blockbuster movies and TV shows, including 50 Shades of Grey, Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle and House of Gucci.
The Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (IPSA), which handles MPs’ expense claims, has previously confirmed Prime subscriptions can be within the rules, but “the MP will need to justify that the subscription is primarily used for parliamentary purposes at the time they submit the claim”.
IPSA resumed publishing MPs’ expenses data this week after a delay of more than a year.
The body “paused” publication of individual claims in November (2021), following the murder of Sir David Amess at a surgery in his constituency.
Full expenses claims are supposed to be published every two months - but the most recent publication dates back to last April (2021).
Announcing the review in November, the body said they had “heard from some Members … that there are concerns about some of the information we publish, including data on travel and constituency surgery venue hire.”
The review found no significant changes needed to be made to the publication scheme.
A spokesperson for Mr Eustice said the claim for Amazon Prime was an "accidental charge" which was repaid at the end of February.
Expense claims for February have yet to be published, and will follow in the Autumn.
A spokesperson for Janet Daby defended the cost, saying: “The subscription continues to save taxpayers’ money on stationery deliveries and has been approved by the parliamentary watchdog.”
A spokesman for Ms Truss said he believed the charge had been put on expenses in error.
