MPs expenses: top Tory in secret deal

MPs' expenses: top Tory in secret deal


A senior Conservative MP investigating Britain’s social care system secretly arranged for the owners of a chain of nursing homes to buy his London flat – which he now rents back at taxpayers’ expense, The Daily Telegraph can disclose.








Mr Dorrell is renting a second home from Linton and Denise Connell in central London, paying the pair about £1,400 a month Photo: REX FEATURES






By Christopher Hope, Holly Watt and Claire Newell

10:00PM GMT 20 Nov 2012


470 Comments




Stephen Dorrell, the former health secretary who now chairs the House of Commons health committee, made a £70,000 profit from the controversial deal which has not previously been publicly declared.


Last night, Mr Dorrell admitted he had arranged for his friends Linton and Denise Connell to buy the flat near the Commons so that he could rent it back from them after a crackdown in the wake of the 2009 MPs’ expenses scandal.


After being approached by The Daily Telegraph about the arrangement last night, Mr Dorrell said he would be declaring it to fellow MPs on the health committee, which started the inquiry into social care in June this year.


Mr Dorrell, a health secretary in John Major’s government between 1995 and 1997, is an influential voice in elderly care, one of the Government’s most controversial policy areas.


Labour last night questioned Mr Dorrell’s arrangement. One MP, John Mann, said he should consider his position as committee chairman, adding: “[His committee] will want to know what is going on. This raises questions about his independence. He needs to demonstrate that he has no links, personal or professional, to these landlords.”



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Last night a spokesman for the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (Ipsa) – which released details of Mr Dorrell’s deals and those of more than 300 others on Monday – said that it appeared no rules had been broken because MPs are only banned from renting from family members and companies in which they have an interest.

But the disclosure that a senior Conservative has been caught up in the controversy over expenses will raise further concerns that 51 MPs have been allowed to keep their rental details secret.

Information released by Ipsa shows that Mr Dorrell is renting a second home from Linton and Denise Connell in central London, paying the pair £17,033 in 2011-12, which works out at £1,400 a month.

Mr and Mrs Connell, whom Mr Dorrell described as his friends, are both directors of St Cloud Care, which runs a string of homes in Worcestershire providing care for 300 people.

Mr Dorrell, who is on a visit to Scandinavia with the committee, said last night that he had lived at the one-bedroom flat in Westminster for 33 years, initially renting it from his family before buying it in 2007. According to his expenses files, which were disclosed by The Daily Telegraph in 2009, he attempted to claim £758 in July 2006 while the “flat was being refurbished” but was refused.

After buying the flat, he claimed for the interest on his mortgage for three years until 2010 when he arranged for the Connells to buy the property after new Ipsa rules banned MPs from claiming mortgage interest. Land registry records show that Mr Dorrell bought the flat, which is in a mansion block, for £280,000. He sold it to the Connells for £350,000.

Mr Dorrell said he had not declared the relationship in the register of members’ interests because he was not deriving any financial benefit from the arrangement. Mr Dorrell said he was “perfectly happy to explain it to the committee, there is no financial interest because it’s an arm’s-length rent.”

He said: “This is a flat that I occupied for 33 years and at one stage was owned by my family – because when I got into the House of Commons you were not allowed to have a mortgage, so I rented from them.

“Then I bought it on an interest only mortgage, because that was the rule at the time, and that ended. So I arranged for a third party to buy it. We had an independent assessment of the rent and it is rented at arms length.”

Linton Connell declined to answer questions emailed to him by The Daily Telegraph.

Mr Dorrell described the Connells – who live in a £1 million property they bought in 2002, 15 miles from Mr Dorrell’s constituency home in Charnwood, Leicestershire – as his “friends”.

In 2010, Mr Connell sponsored Mr Dorrell’s son £25 to go on a cycle ride, telling him: “Good Luck! Matt’s in the Himalayas now. You’ll both have stories of your epic adventures to tell one another! The Connells.”

St Cloud describes itself on its website as “a family run business and we take pride in creating a caring and friendly environment.” However, some of its six homes were criticised by the Care Quality Commission during inspections in September. The CQC said of Holmwood care centre in Kidderminster that “improvements” were required in three areas, including “standards of caring for people safely and protecting them from harm”.

Mr Dorrell has said he is open to the idea of a fit and proper person test on care home ownership.