MPs' expenses: Alan and Ann Keen designate boarded up house as main home
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Benedict Smith Our Foreign Staff Gwyn Wright Uche Amako Chris Bascombe Gordon Rayner Chief
A house which the married Labour MPs Alan and Ann Keen designate as their “main” home for expenses purposes could be seized by the local council after they admitted they have not lived in it for months.
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The Telegraph
The property in Brentford, west London, is partly boarded up, with creepers obscuring some windows, and the Keens have been told that if left unoccupied for much longer it will be used for council tenants. Rubble is piled high in the hallway and garden and a tarpaulin covers a window frame in an unfinished loft conversion.

The couple, who use Coutts bank, have claimed almost £140,000 over four years for their “second home”, a flat a short walk from Westminster, while saying their “main” home is the empty house 10-miles away in Mrs Keen’s constituency.

The fact that they have been living full time in their taxpayer-funded “second” home appears to be a clear breach of Commons rules, which state that an MP’s second home should be where he or she spends fewer nights.

The Labour Party last night refused to say whether they would have to appear before the party’s “star chamber”, which decides whether its MPs should face disciplinary action over expenses.

Mr Keen has claimed the arrangement was agreed with the parliamentary fees office because of “exceptional circumstances”.

If they fail to provide a satisfactory answer, the local authority has the power under the 2004 Housing Act to issue an empty dwelling management order and let it to council tenants.

Council officials have visited the three-bedroom house to take pictures of its state and will return regularly.

Keith Dickens, Hounslow’s empty property officer, said: “We would expect it to be sorted within three to six months. If they fail to do that we will say 'You haven’t played ball’ and we will use the powers to bring in a management order.”

Mr Keen, MP for Feltham and Heston, and his wife, a junior health minister who is MP for neighbouring Brentford and Isleworth, said the house was empty because of a dispute with builders, and they expected work to continue soon. Mrs Keen said: “It is categorically untrue to say that our home is an empty dwelling as made clear by the relevant legislation.”

She said it was being “substantially renovated” at their own expense and their representatives were in the process of giving the borough details.

“As soon as this work is completed, we will be back living at home in Brentford, where we have lived for the past 22 years,” she added.

Neighbours in Brentford have said they rarely saw the Keens even before the building work. The Keens have been dubbed Mr and Mrs Expenses because of claims of nearly £40,000 a year under the second home allowance, which has helped them buy a £750,000 Thames-side apartment.

As well as claiming mortgage interest of £2,600 a month on their second home allowances, they have claimed for other charges and maintenance, including £50 to have the sound on their Bose home cinema system reconfigured.

Mrs Keen faced further embarrassment when it emerged that she had claimed on her expenses towards private healthcare.

The Parliamentary Secretary for Health Services, a former nurse, spent £232 on two visits to Blackheath Hospital in August 2005. She said the treatment had been for a member of her staff injured at work.

"Following a period of agreed sickness absence, I requested an occupational health assessment for them to help them in resuming their duties," she said.

"As my member of staff had personal access to healthcare provided by the private sector at Blackheath Hospital, they chose to manage their care in this way.