MPs in Coventry and Warwickshire booked Parliament’s taxpayer-subsided banqueting facilities more than 100 times.
The banqueting list, released by the Parliamentary authorities for the first time despite earlier attempts to block its publication, shows 8,000 bookings by MPs between 2004 and 2009.
The rooms were hired for companies and constituency associations of their political parties, as well as charities, lobby groups and industry bodies, which may seek to influence government policy.
A Coventry Telegraph investigation has uncovered several examples which bring into question whether bookings were against Parliament’s banqueting regulations. They state an MP, organisation or political party should not use the private dining rooms for “direct or indirect financial gain”.
Asked about seven bookings under the shadowy “Westminster Club” between 2004 and 2007, Stratford MP John Maples, also the Conservative Party’s vice-chairman, said it was a club of businessmen used by the Tories to raise funds.
Complaints in 2007 about other dining functions for organisations donating to constituency parties were upheld as a breach of the rules by the Parliamentary standards authorities, and the rules were tightened.
Of the “Westminster Club” dinners, Mr Maples told us: “It was a business club that supported the party from time to time. It was one I set up among people I knew. Those people donated to my constituency association.
“There was a huge mark-up for the banqueting which then subsidised all the banqueting in the Commons. But that got stopped in 2007.”
Of hosting the Bird Group, which went on to propose the controversial eco-town he opposed, Mr Maples said: “Tony Bird is a big businessman in the constituency. If people like that asked me to sponsor a lunch I would. There was no financial relationship.”
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