Top Tories paid constituency parties

Several members of the shadow cabinet used their office expenses to pay more than £150,000 to their local party associations, it emerged today.

Shadow leader of the Commons Alan Duncan paid £42,000 to the Rutland and Melton Conservative Association, while Michael Gove, shadow children's secretary, paid £27,000 to the Surrey Heath Conservative Association, the Daily Telegraph said.

Shadow health secretary Liam Fox also pays £9,000 a year to the Woodspring Conservative Association in Bristol, the paper added.

And the Tories' international development spokesman Andrew Mitchell is said to have paid Sutton Coldfield Conservative Association an annual sum of around £8,000 for the last four years.

The MPs have justified the amounts as paying for costs such as rent, office space and telephone services provided by the associations.

Mr Mitchell told the Telegraph: "The rent I pay is below market rate and has been carefully set as a percentage of the cost of the office which reflects the use I make of it."

Mr Fox added: "They arrange my surgeries, they do some of my casework, and they do a huge amount of secretarial work which probably represents an underpayment for the amount of work they do."