Gordon Brown criticises auditor for demanding repayment of cleaning expenses

Gordon Brown today criticised the independent auditor of MPs' expenses for making him repay money he spent on a cleaner. Brown, who was ordered to repay more than £12,000 last year after a review of his claims by Sir Thomas Legg, was questioned on the issue by Radio 1 listeners in what became a tetchy exchange at lunchtime. The prime minister also revealed he had taken a pay cut worth about £50,000, and insisted he was not in politics "for the money". Without mentioning the auditor by name, Brown said: "What the guy [Legg] basically said was that I should not be paying the cleaner a minimum wage. It was not wrong to have cleaning expenses. I was just paying her too good a wage. I was paying her more than the minimum wage. And he told me I had to pay that back. "To be honest, I'm not going to employ anybody without paying them a decent wage. I feel my crime was to pay a decent wage to my cleaner, because nobody was saying you can't claim for cleaning your house." In the aftermath of the Legg report, a number of ministers complained privately that they were being penalised for paying decent wages to their cleaners and gardeners but Brown's open criticism of the auditor has come as a surprise. One of the listeners said it was "insulting" that the taxpayer had been paying for the prime minister's cleaning. But Brown insisted that, as an MP, he had to be in two places at once and so needed a second home. "What do I do? I have got two children and a wife that was working at the time," he said. The prime minister said again that he had been "shocked" by what came out in the expenses scandal and that the new Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (Ipsa) would mean MPs no longer had control of their pay and allowances. He pointed to Labour's plans to reform elections to the Commons and introduce a democratic Lords as evidence that Labour could help facilitate a new kind of politics. During the Q&A session on Radio 1, a questioner suggested that Brown's pledge in an interview on the same station last September that he would be willing to take a pay cut to help pay for support for the unemployed had not materialised. Brown replied that he had taken a pay cut. "Of course I've taken a pay cut. I do what I say I'll do ... My salary is at the same level as a cabinet minister, and not the prime minister's salary. I ordered that ... I have said that I would take a pay cut and I asked that a pay cut be enforced upon me. And I have not taken the usual pension of prime ministers. I'm not in this for the money." The pay cut is worth about £50,000: according to the House of Commons information office, the prime minister's salary for 2009-10 was £197,689, compared with £144,520 for a cabinet minister. During the broadcast, Brown then faced an angry listener whose uncle, a builder, was out of a job because, the listener claimed, immigration had got "out of control". The prime minister insisted that Labour's points-based system had ensured that no unskilled workers came to Britain from outside the EU. The introduction of the system had "tightened up" immigration, he said, but the listener interrupted to say it was "too late".