Brown's close allies - Triple Flippers Balls and Cooper

The report which contains the following is in the Daily Mail today, linked here.

Married cabinet ministers Ed Balls and Yvette Cooper made a claim for almost four times the amount of mortgage interest to which they were entitled.

The couple, who are among Prime Minister Gordon Brown's closest allies, submitted the claim for £2,600 for two months in 2007.

But the House of Commons Fees Office pointed out that they were allowed to claim for only £733 and docked their claim accordingly.

The officials also discovered that they had submitted the same claim, for the month of July 2006, twice.

The cabinet ministers, who are each paid £141,866 a year, yesterday insisted they had made an 'inadvertent error'.

The husband-and-wife team also 'flipped' the designation of their second home to three different properties within the space of two years.

The couple also regularly put in claims of £600 a month for food.