MPs' expenses: Bill Wiggin made 23 phantom claims but says he is 'only human'

The MP for Leominster, a contemporary of David Cameron at Eton, received more than £11,000 in parliamentary expenses after declaring his constituency property was his second home.

But he and his wife owned outright the £480,000 home near Ledbury in Herefordshire, where he has gone on to breed chickens and prize-winning cattle, and had not taken out a home loan on it.

Mr Wiggin denies that he intended to claim a "phantom mortgage", however, and says he meant to put his £900,000 house in Fulham, west London, as his second home.

But, The Daily Telegraph has disclosed, he submitted expenses claims forms to the Commons fees office for 23 consecutive months on which he had written the Herefordshire address, before officials queried his living arrangements and he changed his designated residence back to London.

In a round of interviews today, Mr Wiggin was forced to admit that he had claimed on the wrong property but said it was an honest mistake. David Cameron, the Conservative leader, agreed but said it was a "bad mistake".

Mr Wiggin said: "I haven't taken public money wrongly and I don't like being lumped in with other MPs who have."

He claimed the public would sympathise with the errors of MPs, adding: "I think people need to realise we are but human.

"I am sure plenty of people have got forms wrong."

The MP claimed he had sent supporting evidence of the mortgage on his London property to the fees office but added: "I am not blaming the fees office at all. It was my fault."

His file, seen by The Daily Telegraph as part of its investigation into MPs' expenses, shows that Mr Wiggin used to nominate his London address as the home on which he claimed the second home allowance.

But in May 2004, just after he and his wife, Milly, bought the property near Ledbury, he started writing the new Herefordshire address on his claims forms.

Mr Wiggin went on to submit monthly mortgage payments of around £570 on the property for two years, in addition to £400 on food, and £240 each on utilities, council tax, telephone bills and service, and £100 on cleaning.

This continued until December 2006, when he submitted several months’ worth of additional costs allowances claims at once.

The fees office asked him to provide a current bank or building society statement and it appears he was asked about which home he was claiming public money to run.

Mr Wiggin was allowed to “change his nomination [of second home] retrospectively” to the London one on five months’ claims, by which time he had been paid £11,514.62 in mortgage interest payments on the countryside home.

He had put that it was his designated second home on 23 consecutive monthly forms, and on one occasion it appears he or the fees office had written the Ledbury address, crossed it out, put the London one in then crossed that out again and put the Ledbury one back in.

From December 2006 onwards, Mr Wiggin has claimed mortgage interest payments on his London property.

Mr Cameron, who was in the year below Mr Wiggin at school, said: "My team went through with Bill Wiggin very carefully yesterday what has happened. He has given us every assurance that every penny he claimed should have been claimed and it does look like it is - it is a bad mistake - but it looks like it is an honest mistake and he was not claiming money that he was not entitled to.

"If he was, that would be totally different and he would be out of the door."

Mr Wiggin, who has been a whip since January, joins two Labour MPs, Elliot Morley and David Chaytor, who could face a police investigation into “phantom mortgage” expenses. Lawyers believe such claims may be a criminal offence under the 2007 Fraud Act and the 1968 Theft Act.

This newspaper has now exposed claims made by more than 170 MPs from the main parties in England, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Although Gordon Brown has announced new rules to overhaul the system, there is still pressure on the Prime Minister and Mr Cameron to act against individual MPs found to have abused expenses.