A Conservative backbencher has defended claiming £127,000 in expenses for a second home in London by explaining that the 43-mile journey from his constituency would place unreasonable demands on his time, energy and fundamental wellbeing as a human being.
Jeremy Farnworth, MP for South Hertfordshire, told reporters that expecting him to commute from his four-bedroom detached home in Bishops Stortford to Westminster would be akin to asking a Victorian mill worker to walk barefoot through snow. The journey, which Google Maps estimates at one hour and twelve minutes by train, becomes considerably more arduous when factoring in what Farnworth described as “the psychological toll of being surrounded by one’s constituents in an enclosed space”.
“People don’t understand the sheer physical impossibility of what they’re asking,” Farnworth said, speaking from his taxpayer-funded two-bedroom flat in Pimlico. “Forty-three miles is an extraordinary distance. By the time I’d made it to Westminster, I’d have lost entire minutes of my day that could have been spent scrutinising legislation or attending select committee meetings.”
When it was pointed out that he had attended just three select committee meetings in the past eighteen months, Farnworth said the hypothetical loss of time was still concerning from a democratic accountability standpoint.
The £127,000 claim, submitted over a four-year period, includes mortgage interest payments, council tax, utility bills and what parliamentary records list as “essential soft furnishings to maintain appropriate standards for constituent meetings”. The soft furnishings appear to include a £2,400 Italian leather armchair and curtains from a interior design consultant in Chelsea.
Sarah Pemberton, who works as a shelf stacker at an Asda in Stevenage, commutes 61 miles each way to the store five days a week. Her journey involves two buses and takes approximately two and a half hours door to door. She earns £11.45 per hour and is not entitled to claim the cost of travel, accommodation or Italian leather armchairs.
“I suppose I’ve just never thought of it as impossible,” Pemberton said when told of Farnworth’s comments. “Though to be fair, I’ve never tried doing it whilst bearing the weight of parliamentary responsibility.”
Farnworth has represented South Hertfordshire since 2015, having previously worked as a management consultant specialising in operational efficiency. He has voted consistently in favour of benefit caps and supported legislation limiting tax relief on travel expenses for ordinary workers, measures he said at the time would “encourage personal responsibility and reduce dependency on state support”.
A spokesman for the parliamentary expenses watchdog confirmed that all of Farnworth’s claims were technically within the rules, though he admitted the rules had been written by MPs and therefore contained what he called “a certain amount of built-in sympathy for the unique challenges faced by people who write the rules”.