Matt Hancock is claiming an extra £13,200 a year in expenses from the taxpayer to rent a love nest after quitting his marital home. The former Health Secretary has been claiming £3300 a month for a property in London since September, shortly before he earned £320,000 for appearing on TV reality show, I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here.
Mr Hancock’s expenses claim is now 50 per cent more than his previous one for a house in his constituency. It comes as a register of MP’s interests shows he has earned more than £440,000 in a year in addition to his £84,144 MP’s salary.
Hancock’s lover Gina Coladangelo and her estranged husband Oliver Tress sold their London home for £7.5million at the start of the year. She was spotted shopping for household items with Hancock in a Homebase store around the time he switched his expenses claim to London.
It sparked speculation the pair were living together but Hancock’s spokesman refused to comment. He said at the time: “Everything is declared properly.” Hancock left his family home in Willesden, north-west London, in June 2021 after pictures emerged of him kissing Coladangelo during lockdown in his office.
Up until August, the Tory claimed £2200 a month for a house in his West Suffolk constituency.
In October, his accommodation claim increased by £1100 a month. His spokesman confirmed that this was for a new second home in London. Hancock also claimed £2882.34 in removal costs.
In February, he wrote on his website that the Ukrainian family he had been hosting at his Suffolk residence had found jobs, a school for their five-year-old daughter and “this week a new home that they can call their own”.
Hancock still owns a £2.2million home in London with his estranged wife Martha, which they bought for £1.6million in 2014. MPs are allowed to claim for the cost of running a second home. This includes a cap of £17,840 a year in rent – or £25,080 in London.
They are able to claim an extra £5720 a year in rent for each “eligible dependent”, up to a maximum of three. Hancock has three children so is able to claim a total of £42,240.
In December, the Tory said he would not stand at the next general election after his appearance on I’m a Celeb provoked a storm of controversy. Earlier this month, Hancock accused a journalist who helped him write a book about the pandemic of “massive betrayal and breach of trust” after she leaked 100,000 of his WhatsApp messages to a newspaper.
Isabel Oakeshott defended the move, claiming it was in the “overwhelming national interest”. It was alleged Hancock rejected Chief Medical Officer Professor Sir Chris Whitty’s April 2020 advice that there should be testing for “all going into care homes”.
But Hancock said the messages were released in a “biased account to suit an anti-lockdown agenda”.
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