Brown snaps over expenses repayment claim

Expenses aren’t dominating today’s election but they have popped up twice.

At Nick Clegg’s press conference the BBC’s Andrew Neil was suggesting Nick Clegg had overdone it on the furnishings at his second home. Nick Clegg invited Andrew Neil round to have a look around at his Sheffield pad and prove it wasn’t a palace.

Now Gordon Brown has taken a swipe at Sir Thomas Legg, the man who Mr Brown insisted needed to be brought in to Parliament to check on MPs’ past expenses, on BBC Radio 1.

In a programme about to be broadcast, Mr Brown is asked about his cleaning expenses (because of Legg’s retrospective limits on cleaning and gardening costs Mr Brown was forced to pay back £ 11,189 which Legg considered excessive overpayment over five years).

On Radio 1, Gordon Brown is asked whether this makes him out of touch with ordinary voters and snaps that “what the guy basically said was I shouldn’t be paying the cleaner a minimum wage”. It was a first glimpse into Mr Brown’s private anger about the repayment.