Labour’s leader on the London Assembly, Len Duvall, has criticised Boris Johnson as playing fast and loose with his expenses after it was revealed that the Mayor claimed public money for a personal website.

According to the BBC, while he was still an MP, Boris Johnson claimed parliamentary allowances to pay for his website which had links promoting the sale of his books and his campaign to become Mayor. The rules on parliamentary websites state that they should be confined to constituency work, not for commercial gain or party political campaigning. Boris Johnson’s claim was rejected by the fees office as it fell “significantly outside the guidelines”. The fees office told Mr Johnson that the links and page entitled “Buy Boris” were “not acceptable on a publicly funded website” and that the material in support of his campaign was “beyond the scope of the Communication Allowance”.

Labour’s leader on the London Assembly, Len Duvall, said
: “Boris was quick to score political points off his former colleagues for their mistakes and misdemeanours, while implying all along that he had done nothing wrong. It’s strange that he went out of his way to criticise MPs when he was playing fast and loose with the rules himself. Parliament says MPs can’t claim public money to promote their own financial or political interests and this is exactly what Boris did. He’s someone who obviously plays by different rules to the rest of us.”

Johnson on MPs’ expenses:

“looking at some of these cases it looks to me as though plod needs to come in” (Boris Johnson, 15th May)

“I do not think I have anything to fear. I would be very happy to put everything in the public domain. I’m almost embarrassed that I seem to have completely failed to claim for all these things that my colleagues claimed, so I find myself amazed by the whole thing.” (Boris Johnson, 13th May)