Four MPs ordered to repay driving fines claimed on expenses using taxpayer funds

Suella Braverman addresses speeding fine controversy

Four MPs have been ordered to repay driving fines claimed on expenses using taxpayers’ money.

The Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority, known as IPSA, has written to each of the MPs ordering them to repay the fines.

Penalty charge notices can be handed out as a result of several offences, including parking on double red lines, driving in bus lanes and wrongly using disabled bays.

It is not known the reasons for the four MPs’ penalty charges.

The MPs include junior minister Amanda Solway, who was found to have claimed an £80 fixed penalty notice in July 2020.

Ms Solway, who is a junior minister in the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, listed the claim under “MP travel expenses”.

A source close to Ms Solloway told The Independent that these had been claimed in error and had been paid back.

Fellow Tory MPs, Bim Afolami and Simon Hoare, also expensed multiple fines from Transport for London.

According to the Independent, Mr Hoare has claimed four times for £80 fines issued in November 2019.

He is MP for Dorset and is currently the chair of the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee.

The Independent reported that Mr Hoare, who is MP for Dorset and current chair of the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee chair, had claimed four times for £80 fines issued in November 2019.

Mr Afolami used taxpayers’ money to pay for two £80 fines in December 2021

But he claimed the incident occurred as a result of an “administrative mixup”, where his IPSA card was registered to his TfL congestion charge account and it was used to pay the penalty by mistake.

He told the Telegraph: “I would have never knowingly paid for penalties with the card – when I found out this had happened, I repaid the £160 immediately.”

A spokesperson for IPSA said: “MPs are not allowed to claim for penalty charges and fines under IPSA rules. Paragraph 3.26 of the Scheme of MPs’ Staffing and Business Costs clearly states that these fines are not claimable.

“Congestion charge can be claimed by MPs from outside London who drive into central London for work.

“IPSA’s checks failed in some cases to identify these claims and some of them were paid. We will contact MPs and ask them to repay, where appropriate.

“We have changed our process to ensure any future such claims are not paid and will reiterate the scheme rules to MPs.”

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