+++ Alan Duncan claims details released +++

Just seen that in the Telegraph tomorrow, Alan Duncan's claims for gardening are under scrutiny.

This looks pretty bad to me. It seems that he was claiming for paying a gardener thousands of pounds for the upkeep of less than an acre at 16 hours per week. This seems to go far beyond what is needed to support his parliamentary work.

Mr Duncan has set himself up for this after his very poor performance on Have I Got News For You a few weeks back where he came across as smarmy and arrogant when asked about this issue. What compounds this is that like Barbara Follet, Mr Duncan is extremely independently wealthy so this sort of behaviour looks particularly grubby.

Unsurprisngly his response has been to insist that the claims are legitimate and were approved by the fees office. That is the defence of all MPs and it is wearing extremely thin.