Balls

In September 2007, Ed Balls, Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families, his wife Yvette Cooper, Chief Secretary to the Treasury, were accused “breaking the spirit” of Commons rules by using MPs’ allowances to help pay for a £655,000 home in north London.

It was alleged that they bought a four-bed house in Stoke Newington, north London, and registered this as their second home (rather than their home in Castleford, West Yorkshire) in order to qualify for up to £44,000 a year to subsidise a reported £438,000 mortgage under the Commons Additional Costs Allowance.

This is despite both spouses working in London full-time and their children attending local London schools.

Martin Bright writes that Balls says ‘the use of the term “socialist” is less of a problem for his generation than it has been for older politicians’.