As you may have heard I've decided to run for Speaker of the House of Commons. Thus far, the Daily and Sunday Telegraph have barely mentioned my expenses and I'm pleased about that, but it's inevitable with the decision to be made on the next Speaker on Monday that a higher level of scrutiny will face all would-be candidates for the job.

Hence I've had the following e-mail and a phone call from the Sunday Telegraph today and in the interests of total transparency I thought I'd share it with you and my detailed responses.

My expenses have always been based on some clear principles; my main home is in my constituency of Gloucester and always has been - even when I was a Minister. It's where my family and I live after all. I've never played the property market and I've never avoided taxes and that includes CGT. I understand why some MPs employ spouses or family members, but I do not. My expenses have been on my website for several weeks and furthermore I have put up the 08/09 year which hasn't even been published yet.

Here is the letter from the Telegraph and my replies in full...

Parmjit

The Sunday Telegraph

20.06.2009

PRIVATE AND CONFIDENTIAL

Dear Parmjit Dhanda,

The Telegraph is investigating the expense claims made by Members of Parliament under the House of Commons allowances system.

We are considering publishing an article in this Sunday's newspaper (June 21 2009) which will contain details of your expense claims.

We are aware of the provisions of the statutory instrument passed by Parliament last July and will therefore not be publishing MPs' addresses or any other details which could compromise security.

However, as a matter of legitimate public interest and concern, we intend to publish the following details about your expense claims under the Additional Costs Allowance, Incidental Expenses Provision and Communications Allowance. We would invite you to respond to the following points.

1.In March 2004, you submitted a claim of £708.33 for the mortgage on your flat. Yet, the accompanying mortgage statement shows that although that was the amount you paid on direct debit, the interest for that month was only £648.83. It appears from the files as if this lower amount was initially submitted on the ACA form, but was crossed out and replaced with the higher figure. The full amount was paid by the fees office. Did you originally enter the lower, interest only, figure? The mortgage statement indicates that the higher, direct debit payment, includes an element or mortgage repayment. How do you justify this?

REPLY: From my recollection the mortgage was an interest only mortgage at the time and the bank set the repayment rate at £708.33. I made sure that I sent the fees office regular mortgage statements - more frequently than they required and I note that they made corrections wherever they saw fit. At no time did they feel the need to contact me to say there was any issue and the first I have seen of adjustments made was when we were supplied with our expenses data for the past four years, a few weeks ago. 

2. The following month, the direct debit payment on your mortgage rises to £750, of which the interest is £691.71. Until the following February, you submit claims for £750. On seven occasions, the fees office pays you the full amount, rather than the interest only. Please explain why you continued to claim for the full cost of your monthly mortgage repayments and not just the interest?

REPLY: Again, I believe these relate to a figure set by the bank for an interest only mortgage. The difference between the 'interest due' figure and the 'direct debit' figure may be because an additional amount of interest was being paid, but I simply do not know. In any event it appears that the fees office have chosen to just re-imburse the lower figure, which is fine.  They have never contacted me to suggest there were any issues here. The matter seems much clearer in bank statements when I changed the mortgage to an ordinary repayment mortgage rather than an 'interest only'. I'm not an accountant. 

3. From September 2005 until April 2008, your mortgage interest claims remain unchanged at £778.61, yet the statements in support of this amount refer to an earlier period, or are not present at all. Given you have a flexible mortgage, did your interest payment change during this period? Why did you not file more mortgage statements with the fees office? Did you claim more or less interest than you actually paid?

REPLY: I haven't got those figures at hand, but I'm likely to have missed out as mortgage interest rose in that time. I do my best at record keeping and believe I'm getting better at it, but you are also at the mercy of when and if you receive statements from the bank. You usually get them retrospectively and I have one in my hand saying that between October and December of 2007 my mortgage interest was over £800 per month. So I actually could have claimed more - but rest assured I won't be retrospectively claiming for the money I missed out on by using a lower figure!

5. Other purchases under your ACA include £309 for new curtains, £200 on two headboards, £849 for an antique table, £349 for a sofa, £59 on a desk, £499 on a sideboard from Next, £85 for a shoe rack, £1,323 on carpets and £398 on cutlery and crockery. This included £40.85 on a teapot, £17 on a sugar bowl and £29.79 on a gravy boat and stand. Can you please explain why you feel these claims are justified? what way do you feel they were incurred "wholly, exclusively and necessarily" to enable you to carry out your duties as an MP?

REPLY: Yes, the flat needed curtains. I bought the headboards because my 3 year old (I think he was 2 at the time) decided to use a bed as a trampoline and banged his head on the wall - so I decided it was time to get some headboards. The table is not antique, it is 'antique style' and I use it as my work desk. The £849 it cost included chairs. The £349 was claimed as I thought it was for the chairs that go with the aforementioned table. When I realized it wasn't I sent in a cheque to repay it because the sofa (Which happened to be on the same receipt) is for my main home in Gloucester. I guess you could say I did this out of hyper-honesty - it would not have been noticed if I'd kept schtum, but that would have been wrong. The sideboard I use for keeping hansards and work documents and the 'carpets' were to replace some damaged laminate that had become quite dangerously detached from the floor. The cutlery and crockery is the only cutlery and crockery I have claimed for in my 8 years as a MP

6. Last year you started to submit receipts and invoices and made claims on your ACA for precise amounts. Until then, you did not submit receipts in support of any of your claims for food, utilities, telephone bills, cleaning and repairs, preferring instead to request rounded-off amounts that were apparently estimated, including, for instance, monthly claims of £60 for unspecified "repairs" in 2004-05. Can you shed light on how you calculated these amounts, without submitting receipts? What were these "repairs"? Why did you submit no receipts until last year?

REPLY: I've always rounded down rather than rounded up. And I try to find efficiencies to reduce costs over time. On food, I host a lot of meetings and if someone meets with me, I'll usually buy the refreshments. It can be pricey eating on the run in London, but again I'm constantly looking to claim less. Utilities have included electricity, water, second home insurance and security costs. The telephone costs included a dial up internet connection which I don't do anymore because it is expensive. The 'repair' bill included the cost of installing security measures and fixing them.

7. Until last year you claimed at least £4,760 for cleaning, at about £100 a month, without producing any receipts. These claims appear to stop last year, when you started to submit receipts. Can you please explain what "cleaning" this paid for? Why there were no receipts and why you have apparently stopped claiming for it?

REPLY: I do still have a cleaner. Instead of having someone come every week we've found somebody cheaper who comes less frequently and I have made more of an effort to keep receipts each time. When you're away a lot and don't have much time to keep a place tidy it is helpful to have somebody pop in to keep the place clean, tidy and looking more lived in than empty.

8. Last year you claimed too much money for your council tax bill by apparently misreading the invoice from Lambeth Council - an error the fees office spotted. Did you personally check your expenses claim?

REPLY: Don't know what you're talking about but will check. You need to remember that when the fees office make corrections they don't necessarily report back to us there was ever an error.

9. When you started to submit phone bills last year, some of them were disallowed by the fees office under the ACA because they were for mobile phones. In previous years, when you claimed for telephone bills on your ACA but did not submit bills, were you claiming for mobile phones? In previous years you also claimed for mobile phones on your IEP. Does this mean you were claiming for them twice?

REPLY: No, I always used to claim (and still do for mobiles) out of the IEP. By word of mouth someone told me I was meant to claim it from ACA instead, but obviously they or I was mistaken because the information that came back was that IEP is the right place. As I said earlier, as part of my ACA claims I did used to use internet dial-up at the flat, but these days I only check my e-mails from the office - because e-mails can take over your life. I also claim for landline calls from the flat on ACA.

10. On a number of occasions, you claim for two mobile phones on your IEP. Both are in your name, but the billing address for one is in Hayes, West London. Is this your property or is it your parents' property? Can you please tell me who was using this phone?

REPLY: The phone with the billing address in Hayes is the one the Daily Telegraph called me on this morning. It's my phone, the same number I have always had since the 1990's, but I only got round to changing the billing address last year. I have two mobiles, one is my 'media' mobile phone and the other one is for general use. Nobody else uses either of them.

11. Since 2003, you have claimed £8,365 on food without producing any receipts. In 2004-05, you also submitted monthly claims of £150 for refreshments on your IEP. These were paid until the fees office started to question them. Do you think this amount of spending on food is justified?

REPLY: If I have an intern doing work for me I think the least I can do is pay for their lunch and their travel. That could be over £100 in a month in itself. There are a lot of people who work as volunteers in my office, who do things like stuffing envelopes or folding paper. I buy tea, coffee, biscuits, milk etc. I have also hosted over 3,000 of my constituents at Parliament since the year 2001. I actually personally subsidise the running of my office - I think many MPs probably do.

12. Since 2004, under your IEP you have also claimed at least £8,300 in petty cash. Can you please tell me how you justify this expenditure?

REPLY: Over the course of 4 years the costs of buying stamps, paper, stationary, toner for printers, the local newspaper everyday and a variety of other things does actually add up. As I said earlier, I actually subsidise my office out of my salary.

13. There have also been claims under IEP for two digital cameras and £188 for a video from TNS Media Intelligence. Can you please tell me what the cameras are used for and what the video is for? How does this video help with running your office?

REPLY: I have a digital camera in London to take pictures of tour parties from my constituency so I can send them a momento of the day. I have one in the constituency office so I can take pictures of constituency events and post them on my website or to give them to local media. The video was of a TV performance, we do try to post up as much information as we can on my website of what I've been up to, including TV appearances.

14. You also had a claim for £121.46 for "imprints on Christmas mailing" disallowed. Can you please tell me what this was for and why you thought it appropriate to claim?

REPLY: I wanted to put my details in Christmas cards so people could contact me but they said no.

15. You also tried to claim £50 for a Remembrance Day wreath, bought from the Royal British Legion. Please can you advise me why you felt this was an appropriate claim to make?

REPLY: It's not appropriate and not something I would ever consciously do. The fees office were right to say it's not in the scope for re-imbursement.

16. You successfully claimed for three videos or DVDs of parliamentary speeches or debates, including a copy of your maiden speech. Can you please tell me what these were for and why you feel they a justifiable use of taxpayers' money?

REPLY: Please see question 13. People need to know what we're up to.

17. You also claimed £85 to register two websites in his name. The fees office had to ask you to remove certain features from your website because they felt they were inappropriate on a publicly-funded website. Can you tell me why you thought these were justified?

REPLY: That was an error and I told them so. I sent back the money because I want to be able to say what I want to say on my website without parliamentary restrictions. I never intended to claim for my domain names from the fees office, it was an oversight.

18. According to reports, you have repaid £349 of your expenses. Can you please tell me which of your claims you were paying back? And will you repay any more of your expenses?

REPLY: Please see question 5

19.Given the level and content of your expenses claims, do you believe that you are a suitable candidate for speaker and have the credibility to restore public confidence in parliament?

REPLY: Yes. Expenses are needed so people of limited means can go in to politics. I think we should improve the system, ban flipping and tax avoidance. But let's be proportionate about those of us who are not abusing the system.

20. As Speaker, how would you like to see the next annual round of MPs' expenses details published? Should the receipts again be disclosed? If so, with what level of redaction - more, less or the same as this year? Or should the receipts be withheld from publication and some other form of information provided instead? - in which case, please elaborate.

REPLY: Before I answer that I'd really like to see how you write this up for Sunday. I think I've been open and frank with you guys and would like to see more transparency. But that does mean the folk writing it up need to be fair to those of us who haven't been cheating the system, otherwise we will never be able to collaborate to get it right.

I would be grateful if we could receive your comments by 1pm today (Saturday, June 20), so that they can be given due weight in our inquiries and properly reflected in any article we decide to publish. Please could you also inform us if you do not wish to comment.