It explains why MPs waged a three-year, £100,000 legal battle to try to keep the records

secret. They reveal that Mr Brown’s predecessor Tony Blair claimed more than £10,000 for a new kitchen, £515 for a dishwasher and also used House of Commons allowances to help raise a £260,000 re-mortgage deal.

Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott pocketed £7,000 in expenses for sprucing up his mock Tudor mansion in Hull. Close Blair ally Peter Mandelson claimed nearly £3,000 to revamp a bathroom.

Junior Pensions Minister Barbara Follett, wife of millionaire novelist Ken Follett, claimed more than £1,600 for window-cleaning at their London home – at £94 a time.

And former Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett claimed a total of £12,170 for house repairs.

Details of the lavish use of the controversial MPs’ Additional Costs Allowance for second homes were finally disclosed after Commons authorities surrendered to Freedom of Information requests.

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Around 450 pages of claim forms and receipts were released to journalists last night. And the details appalled campaigners against Government waste. 

Matthew Elliott, of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said: “It’s clear that this allowance pays for much more than just a base in London. MPs use it to fund a lifestyle far more comfortable than their constituents enjoy.”

The documents show Mr Brown had his London flat, a short walk from Downing Street, refurbished in 2006. He claimed £4,471 for work on the kitchen. Another bill for bedroom redecoration work was £1,396.

Mr Brown also claimed £36 for his monthly Sky TV rental and up to £214 a month for cleaning.

Every three months, he put in a claim for £650 for food and over £1,000 a year in council tax.

At the same time, his predecessor Mr Blair claimed £10,674 for refurbishment work on the kitchen of his constituency home in the North-east. The Blairs re-mortgaged the house in Trimdon, Co Durham, during 2005. 

Their outstanding debt with Cheltenham & Gloucester stood at nearly £270,000 at the end of 2005, to be repaid over a 23-year term. They had originally bought the property for just £30,000 in 1983.

Taxpayers funded a new dishwasher for the Blairs in 2005 costing £515, including installation. Mr Blair’s TV licence was paid for and he regularly claimed cleaning bills of up to £162 and around £1,300 in council tax. Embarrassingly, copies of household bills also revealed that the Blairs were occasionally sent reminders for late payment.

In November 2005, Northumbrian Water sent Mr Blair’s wife Cherie a reminder notice for an outstanding bill of £147.11.

Two months later, Mr Blair was warned that a £284 British Gas bill was overdue.

Mr Prescott, who was Mr Blair’s deputy at the time, claimed £6,707.06 in July 2005 to spruce up his turreted Hull home, known locally as Prescott Towers. Files include a note from a Commons official recording a phone call from Mr Prescott asking about payment of council tax on his grace-and-favour Admiralty House flat in London.

And the records also appear to suggest that at one point in 2005 Mr Prescott got temporarily behind with his gas bills.

Tory leader David Cameron restricted his claims to payments for mortgage interest on his constituency home in Witney, Oxon.

Claim forms show he was paid £1,741 a month. And Shadow Foreign Secretary William Hague was ticked off by Commons authorities in October 2005 for not providing documents to back up his £1,876.59 “service/maintenance” claim.

In total, expenses for 14 current and former MPs were released. Full details of spending by the rest of Westminster’s MPs are due to be published in the autumn.

Shadow Leader of the House Theresa May said: “We must ensure that the systems in place see that money is properly spent.”

"BROWN THINKS MOTORISTS ARE JUST A CASH COW"

READ PATRICK O'FLYNN'S DEVASTATING VERDICT ON OUR DOOMED PRIME MINISTER NOW...