The British parliament began a probe on Friday into allegations that culture minister Maria Miller wrongly claimed expenses for a house where her parents lived.
The affair has prompted accusations that the government put pressure on the Daily Telegraph newspaper not to reveal the claims as Miller is overseeing the process of drawing draw up new plans to regulate the press.
Two government aides contacted the newspaper to discuss the story before it was published and mentioned Miller’s key role in creating the new press regulator, following the judge-led Leveson inquiry into media ethics.
“Maria has obviously been having quite a lot of editors? meetings around Leveson at the moment,” Miller’s advisor Jo Hindley told a Telegraph journalist, according to the newspaper’s account of the phone call.
“So I am just going to kind of flag up that connection for you to think about.”
Prime Minister David Cameron’s media chief Craig Oliver also called the newspaper’s editor and allegedly said the article may be poorly timed as Miller was “looking at Leveson at the moment”.
Cameron’s Downing Street office has insisted the references to the Leveson inquiry were intended to reflect how busy Miller was and did not amount to a threat to the newspaper.
Miller claimed second home allowances of £90,718 ($146,300, 111,800 euros) — almost the maximum permitted — between 2005 and 2009 to pay for mortgage payments and bills at a house where her parents have apparently lived since 1996.
Cameron on Thursday declared his “full support” for the culture secretary.
Her spokesman said: “Mrs Miller’s expenses have been audited twice and found to be wholly proper and above board. Any suggestion to the contrary is simply untrue”.
He added that Miller was ready to “fully co-operate” with any inquiry.
The investigation opened as former lawmaker Margaret Moran was handed a two-year supervision and treatment order on Friday after she was found guilty of falsely claiming £53,000 in allowances.
She does not receive a criminal conviction as she was deemed unfit to stand trial due to depression.
Several lawmakers were jailed for expenses fraud after the Telegraph published details of their claims in 2009.
The scandal forced a shake-up of the system of parliamentary allowances.
UK culture minister Miller faces expenses probe
