Matt Hancock claimed £3000 in rent from the taxpayer for an empty London flat while he was earning £320,000 in the Australian jungle.
Newly released expenses claims for the former health secretary reveal he continued to claim rent on his flat throughout the month of November last year. His controversial stint on I’m A Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here ran from November 2 to 27.
Under Parliamentary rules, Hancock is entitled to claim the rent even while on a leave of absence. But the revelation will add to the public anger over his TV gameshow appearance. During the month of filming, he kept his £84,144 a year MP’s salary – or £7012 a month before tax.
He chose to donate £10,000, or three per cent of his appearance fee, to charity.
Most MPs who claim for a second home have their rent paid directly to the landlord by the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority. An IPSA spokesman said: “IPSA continues to cover costs for MPs during periods of absence from Parliament.”
But he added that MPs can choose to refund part of their expenses.
Liberal Democrat chief whip Wendy Chamberlain MP said: “This is a slap in the face for all those hard-working families coping with the cost-of-living crisis. Matt Hancock insists he is a normal person now but no normal, hard-working person would ever try to get away with claiming this.
“He can’t have it both ways. He can’t rake in big sums for a TV show where he did no work for his constituents, and still expect to claim these kind of expenses.
"He should pay back that month’s rent, which is still just a tiny fraction of his earnings from I’m A Celeb.”
The latest cache of IPSA expense payments released this week show Hancock had made no repayment for November by the end of January. When we asked his office if he intended to use any of his I’m A Celeb fee to repay the taxpayer for November’s rent, a spokesman told us: “You can’t stop a tenancy for one month. All Matt’s declarations are made properly and are available for anyone to see.”
IPSA records show Hancock claimed £3300 in rent on November 17 and another £3300 on December 20. His register of interests shows that on December 14, he received £320,000 from TV company Lifted Productions.
In total, he has earned £455,097.81 on top of his MP’s salary from TV work, newspaper articles, book sales and speeches over the past 12 months. Dad-of-three Hancock left his family home in Willesden, North London, in June 2021 after pictures emerged of him kissing his then-aide, Gina Coladangelo, in breach of lockdown guidelines.
That September, Hancock upped his rental claims by 50 per cent when he stopped claiming on his constituency home in West Suffolk and asked taxpayers to fund a more expensive flat in London. Until August, Hancock claimed £2200 a month for a house in his constituency. He also claimed £2882.34 in removal costs in September.
Coladangelo and her estranged husband, Oliver Tress, sold their South London home to chef Gordon Ramsay for £7.5million in January. Hancock lost the Tory whip over his stint on I’m A Celeb and will step down as an MP at the next election.
At the time of his TV appearance, Andy Drummond, deputy chairman of Hancock’s local Conservative Association, said: “I’m looking forward to him eating a kangaroo’s penis.
Hancock’s spokesman previously said: “As well as raising the profile of his dyslexia campaign in front of 11 million viewers, Matt donated £10,000 to St Nicholas Hospice and the British Dyslexia Association.”
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