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Former Labour MP David Chaytor who was jailed for expenses fraud is to challenge his imprisonment.
The ex-Bury North MP was sentenced in January to 18 months in prison for making false parliamentary expenses claims totalling £18,350.
The Court of Appeal will consider his application to have his prison sentence overturned on March 22.
Chaytor pleaded guilty to three charges of false accounting in relation to rent and claims for IT consultancy work that he had never been required to pay for.
He claimed £12,925 in rent for a property in Regency Street between September 2005 and September 2006, when he was in fact the owner.
He also claimed £5,425 between September 2007 and January 2008 for renting a property owned by his mother and £1,950 for IT services in May 2006 by using false invoices.
Today it emerged the cost to the public purse of pursing politicians suspected of criminal offences related to their parliamentary expense claims has topped £840,000.
The figure was revealed following a freedom of information request by the Press Association.
A Scotland Yard spokesman said the cost was calculated based on the amount of time devoted by police officers to the cases.
"They have worked on a case-by-case basis and as the need has arisen. The time they have spent doing it has been costed on the basis of the percentage that they have dedicated to this inquiry," the spokesman said.
Article Comments
A thief and a liar and now a squirming rat.
Let's hope he gets what's coming to him full and mighty and with some added time for bad behaviour.
Rob Roy McGregor
23rd Feb 2011 at 4:46 pm
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