First-class ‘privacy’ racks up £1,714 bill
TOWN MP’S EXPENSES REVEALED
HUDDERSFIELD’S MP has been travelling first class.
The latest parliamentary expenses figures show Barry Sheerman spent £1,714 on firstclass train tickets between London and the north during 2018/19.
Overall Mr Sheerman, Huddersfield’s MP since 1979, spent £2,969 on rail travel around the country.
His expenses claims show he normally travels first class between Kings Cross and West Yorkshire – either Wakefield or Leeds.
He then takes the train or a taxi to Huddersfield.
MPs are allowed to claim firstclass rail tickets on expenses for themselves, family and staff if the price is cheaper than the standard on-the-day “walk-on” fare.
Since politicians generally book travel in advance, that can usually be achieved.
Mr Sheerman told the Examiner his over 60s discount also brought the price of the ticket down to below that of a standard class fare.
He added: “We try to keep our travel expenses as low as possible but when I’m travelling I’m often working on a lot of important stuff and being in first class gives a degree of privacy.”
The expenses report shows Mr Sheerman’s £1,714 first class bill is for only a handful of journeys.
They cost between £102 and £281.
The report also proves that ‘economy’ class tickets sometimes cost more, with one of Mr Sheerman’s claims for a standard class ticket on September 27 last year costing a stunning £222.40.
The MPs expenses data, recorded for all to see on the IPSA website, show he claimed £1,189 for rail travel for his staff, £546 on taxis and £314 on air travel.
His overseas trips by plane included flights to Geneva and Brussels. Mr Sheerman said those flights were in his capacity of chairman of the Parliamentary Transport Safety Committee, which was advising the World Health Organisation and the United Nations.
One of Mr Sheerman’s biggest expenses is for hotels for his staff.
They have racked up £2,713 of hotel bills, mostly at the luxury Radisson Park Plaza in Westminster.
Mr Sheerman said most MPs’ staff used that hotel as it provided a discount to the House of Commons, however, he said that might end as the hotel had put its rates up.
Mr Sheerman does not need to use hotels as he owns a property in London.
The new analysis, based on official IPSA data, shows MPs claimed for £1.1million worth of rail travel for themselves in 2018-19. Some £351,109 of that – roughly onethird – was for first-class tickets.
They claimed a further £55,583 for travel by spouses and children. Some 50 per cent of that was for first-class. But of the £321,583 they claimed for rail travel by their staff, only 13 per cent was for first-class.
The analysis found there were 23 MPs who claimed more than £5,000 for first-class rail travel for themselves during the financial year. Nine are Conservatives, 13 are Labour MPs, and one (Guto Bebb) sits as an independent.
Ben Wallace, the Conservative MP for Wyre and Preston North who was promoted to Defence Secretary in July, claimed the most – at £10,213. Chi Onwurah (Lab, Newcastle Central) at £9,662 and Geoffrey Cox (Con, Torridge and West Devon) at £8,512 had the next highest claims for their own first-class rail travel.