Alan Keen
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Alan Keen, who died on Sunday aged 73, was the serving Labour MP for Feltham and Heston, having sat in the House alongside his wife Ann, who represented neighbouring Brentford & Isleworth.
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The Telegraph
The Keens worked together effectively for their constituents, he from 1992, she from 1997 until her defeat in last year’s election. But they became known as “Mr & Mrs Expenses” when The Daily Telegraph disclosed in 2009 that they had claimed almost £1.7 million in total expenses over seven years – having bought a flat across the river from the Commons despite their home at Brentford being less than 10 miles away.

Unlike his wife, a health minister under Gordon Brown, Alan Keen never held ministerial office. But he was respected as a backbencher, and carved out a niche as the voice in the Commons of grassroots football and supporters of the game.

For 18 years before his election, Keen had been a part-time scout for his beloved Middlesbrough, working under Jackie Charlton and being credited with having brought Graeme Souness to the club.

At Westminster he chaired the All-Party Football Group — bringing the likes of Steve McClaren and Sven-Goran Eriksson to the Commons — served on the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee, conducted two investigations into the game and played as a defender for the parliamentary team until cancer forced him to hang up his boots.

The former Southampton manager Lawrie McMenemy, who managed the team, said: “He had been a good player when he was younger, but even in his later days he was still putting the tracksuit on and wanting to be on the bench whenever the team played.”

Keen’s family connections at Westminster were unique. Not only was his wife an MP; but so was his sister-in-law Sylvia Heal, who rose to be deputy Speaker. But when the expenses scandal broke, such links proved controversial, the more so as Alan Keen — vice-chairman of the All-Party Group Against Financial Exploitation — had voted in 2008 against the reform of expenses (though the couple had also called for MPs’ expenses to be made public).

Alan and Ann Keen — despite living in a neighbourhood from which another MP commuted to Westminster — combined their second homes allowances in 2002 to buy the apartment at Waterloo.

They claimed for interest payments on it and for remortgaging their home (including an element for life insurance) and tried to claim for council tax on the flat. The parliamentary Fees Office agreed that both mortgages were claimable.

After the Telegraph reported that the Keens had claimed £175,000 over five years for accommodation and almost £1.7 million in total expenses over seven years, the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards ruled that they had made a “serious” breach of the rules involving “significant public funds”, and ordered them to repay £5,678. The Standards and Privileges Committee reduced this to £1,500 because the claims had been approved. In the wake of the disclosures, there were several arson attacks on Ann Keen’s constituency office; squatters, discovering that the Keens’ Brentford house had been vacant for nearly a year following a dispute with builders undertaking renovation work, moved in. They claimed that they wanted to turn it into a centre for war refugees, in protest at Ann Keen having voted for the Iraq War.

Ann Keen lost her seat in 2010 to the Conservative Mary Macleod, but her husband, at 72, was re-elected for his traditionally safer constituency with a majority of 4,658.

David Alan Keen was born in Lewisham on November 25 1937, and brought up on Teesside, attending Sir William Turner’s Grammar School, Redcar. He served in the Army for three years, mostly at Wellington Barracks.

Keen stayed in London, running his own business as a fire protection industry systems analyst, accountant and manager until his election to the Commons. At weekends he undertook scouting missions for Middlesbrough, or watched the team at Ayresome Park.

A Hounslow borough councillor from 1986 to 1990, he captured Feltham & Heston in 1992 from the sitting Conservative MP Patrick Ground. The key constituency issue was Heathrow, both as a source of employment and an environmental nuisance. The development of Terminal 5 and plans for a third runway also put Keen on the spot.

He believed there “had to be a limit” to the expansion of Heathrow, but angered locals in 2009 by opposing a motion urging the Labour government to reconsider its support for the third runway. After the Coalition took power the plan was shelved, but at the time of Keen’s death the airport’s owners, BAA, were working hard to revive it.

Appropriately, Keen was vice-chairman of the All-Party Aviation group. He also chaired the All-Party Athletics Group, and was a former member of the Education Select Committee.

Alan Keen was twice married. He married Ann Lloyd (née Fox) in 1980; she survives him, with a son and a daughter from his first marriage and a stepson.