UK Home Secretary exploits loophole to ‘milk’ expenses system to get £25,000 to pay for personal household bills, report reveals

UK Home Secretary Suella Braverman has “milked” the expenses system to get taxpayers to foot her household bills, a report has revealed, as ordinary citizens are struggling to pay their bills amid the cost-of-living crisis.

A damning report, published by The Mirror newspaper on Sunday, has revealed that the senior Tory minister has claimed nearly £25,000 in five years for her house in London, despite staying rent-free in her parents’ home, whilst the country is grappling with skyrocketing energy prices.

The new scandal by the Home Secretary is likely to anger the millions of people hit by the worsening cost-of-living crisis.

“Even if it is within the rules, it isn’t within the spirit of the rules. It just shows how out of touch some Conservative MPs have become,” Lib Dem Chief Whip Wendy Chamberlain said.

The investigation has revealed that Braverman, who has been accused of exploiting a loophole in the system, uses governmental handouts to pay the household bills on her £1.2 million family pad in Bushey, Herts.

Braverman, who earns £67,505 on top of her MP salary of £84,144, told watchdogs that she “fully funds” the home she stays at in Fareham, Hants. However, the mentioned house is her parents’ house and so costs her nothing in rent.

“This looks like an attempt to game the rules to maximize benefit,” said former Committee on Standards in Public Life chairman Sir Alistair Graham.

“She says she ‘fully funds’ her constituency accommodation but does not reveal it is owned by her parents. Those are weasel words, she needs to explain what she means,” he added.

“Is she manipulating the rules to strengthen her household income? It has the smell of a conspiracy to do that,” he emphasized.

MP Braverman, who has vowed to crack down on the benefits “culture, is currently on a mission to deport asylum seekers in the UK.

She defended the government’s new plan to deport refugees to Rwanda and said that she is convinced Rwanda is a safe country to deport migrants who arrived in Britain illegally.

In December 2022, the UK High Court ruled in favor of the British government’s controversial policy to fly asylum seekers to Rwanda, ignoring international criticisms.

Human rights groups say it is immoral and inhumane to send people more than 6,400 kilometers to a country they don’t want to live in. They also cite Rwanda’s poor human rights record, including allegations of torture and killings of government opponents.