A married couple dubbed ‘Mr and Mrs Expenses’ will face a formal sleaze inquiry over their use of Commons second home allowances.

Ann and Alan Keen, both Labour MPs, have come under criticism after it emerged that they were living full time in their designated “second home” near Westminster, while their designated “main” property a short commute away lay empty for up to a year.

The couple face repossession by their local council, and are also battling to evict squatters from the house in Mrs Keen’s constituency of Brentford and Isleworth in west London.

Bill Cash, a senior Conservative MP, claimed more than £15,000 in taxpayer-funded expenses to pay his daughter rent for her London flat – even though he owned a home closer to Westminster.

Mr Cash designated a west London flat owned by his daughter, Laetitia, as his “second home” for parliamentary expenses during 2004 and 2005.

During the period he was renting the flat, Mr Cash owned a flat in Pimlico — a short walk from Parliament.

He said on Thursday that he was not living in the Pimlico property nor renting it out at the time. It was not clear why he did not live in this flat — although he has designated it as his second home since 2005. His main home is a country house in Shropshire.

Shortly after the MP stopped claiming money for his daughter’s flat, Miss Cash, 35, who is hoping to become a Conservative MP and is on David Cameron’s “A list” of preferred candidates, sold the property for a £48,000 profit.

She had owned the apartment for less than a year and a half, and for more than 12 months of that period her father had paid her £1,200 a month in rent from taxpayer funds.

Following the move, Mr Cash, a leading Eurosceptic who has regularly rebelled against the Conservative leadership, nominated two private members’ clubs as his “second home” for a three-month period.

Margaret Beckett tried to claim £600 for hanging baskets and pot plants as she lavished tens of thousands of pounds of taxpayers’ money on her constituency home whilst living in a grace and favour apartment in London.

The housing and planning minister found herself in trouble with the fees office when she submitted the claim in 2006, which covered “the supply of plants for hanging baskets, tubs, pots, planters, pouches and garden”, and another £711 for “labour and materials for painting of summer house, shed and pergola”.

An official in the department of finance and administration sent her a letter explaining that expenses claims had to be “wholly, exclusively and necessarily incurred to enable you to stay overnight away from your main home”. The official said that in respect of the work in the garden: “I find it difficult to conclude that it meets the requirements set out in the Green Book.”

The official cut £1,311 from Mrs Beckett’s total claim of £15,211.21 for work on her house, which drew this response from the minister: “We live in an old cottage – not the beautiful, strong, stone-built type, but the kind of thing you throw together for the farmworkers from the bricks you had when you knocked down the pigsty – and it requires a good deal of maintenance and repair.”

Mrs Beckett, 66, claimed second home allowances of £72,537 for her constituency home in Derby in the four years between 2004 and 2008, despite having no mortgage or rent to pay on the property.

Mrs Beckett earns £104,050, but during her spells as environment secretary and foreign secretary she earned £141,866.

During much of the time she was making the claims, she was living rent-free in Admiralty House, Whitehall, which enabled her to rent out her London flat.

Anthony Steen, a Tory grandee, spent tens of thousands of pounds of taxpayers’ money on his million-pound country home, including paying a forestry expert to inspect 500 trees in the grounds, according to a claim he submitted.

Mr Steen, the MP for Totnes in Devon, designated his constituency property as his second home and then claimed the maximum available amount under the Additional Costs Allowance.

Over four years he claimed £87,729, including payments for tree surgery, guarding his shrubs against rabbits, maintaining a separate cottage and overhauling his private sewage system. In January 2005, items on Mr Steen’s claim for £13,742 included £2,858.94 for leaking pipes, £1,755.89 for fixing the water supply from the “spring and bore hole”, £1,318 for a wrought iron fireplace and £597.14 for lights.

There was also a £459 charge from a woodland consultant to come and inspect new plantings on Mr Steen’s lands. The consultant tagged shrubs and assessed whether there was a need for “additional guarding” against rabbits.

Another £120 was for “fencing on two fields to the right of the drive leading down to the stables”. A fees officer scrawled on that bill: “I’ve paid this, should I have?”

Another invoice detailed how a chartered forester, who was a member of the International Dendrology Society, had been employed to carry out a survey of the laurels and rhododendrons. The forester was also hired to “carry out annual maintenance programme to approx 500 trees within the grounds and inspect said trees.”

Phil Hope, the care services minister, is facing questions over how he spent nearly £10,000 a year refurbishing a small south London flat.

The Government minister claimed more than £37,000 in MPs expenses in just over four years on everything from a new kitchen, seven doors, and wooden flooring.

Mr Hope also claimed for a chest of drawers, a mattress, a television, a sofa, an armchair, a washing machine, three chairs, two bookcases, one coffee table, a wardrobe and a dining room table.

He also charged the taxpayer for a £120 new barbecue and £61 for gardening materials – even though Commons rules say that MPs can only claim for the cost of maintaining a garden.

Land registry plans show that the flat has access to a communal garden, which yesterday was empty with no plants, nor any sign of the barbecue.

Mr Hope bought the flat in Southwark, south London, in 1998, and remortgaged the property with Cheltenham & Gloucester in October 2002.

The Commons Green Book bans MPs from claiming “the capital cost of repairs which go beyond making good dilapidations and enhance the property”.

Mr Hope’s monthly returns for the additional costs allowance between 2004-05 and the middle of last year show that he was able to overhaul the flat completely.

Madeleine Moon, the MP named “Furniture Parliamentarian of the Year”, spent thousands in furniture shops near her Welsh constituency house and claimed the money back on her London designated second home allowance.

Mrs Moon, Labour chairman of the House of Commons Furniture Industry Group, submitted at least 19 receipts totalling more than £4,000 for fixtures and fittings either bought in Wales or delivered to her house there.

MPs may use their Additional Costs Allowance to run a second home if they consider it necessary to perform Parliamentary duties. They are not permitted to make claims for their designated main residence.

After being elected MP for Bridgend, mid Glam in 2005, Mrs Moon bought a small flat in south London and designated it as her second home. But the records show that over the last four years she has regularly submitted claims for items bought in shops in Cardiff, Swansea and Bridgend. She also had furniture delivered to her seafront house in Porthcawl.

Among the furniture which Mrs Moon had delivered there was a £769 coral “triad” sofa from Marks & Spencer, and £683.56 in furnishings, including a bedside table and pillows, from Ikea. Both firms have outlets in London. She also bought a dining table and four chairs from a Swansea shop at a cost of £399, and spent £818.89 on a DVD player and television at Currys in Bridgend in July 2006.

Mrs Moon bought at least four sets of bedding in four years in shops in Wales and London. Mrs Moon said that she went to outlets such as Ikea in Cardiff because as a new MP in 2005 she did not know where to shop in London. Mrs Moon was buying items in Wales as late as May 2008, which she claimed were for her flat in the capital.

Eleanor Laing, a Conservative front bencher, has admitted that she did not pay capital gains tax when she made £1 million profit on a second home bought with the help of taxpayers’ money.

Mrs Laing, the shadow junior justice minister, claimed more than £80,000 from the public purse towards mortgage interest and service payments on two adjacent flats she bought in Westminster, even though her constituency home is less than an hour’s journey away by Tube.

She was able to claim parliamentary expenses on the flats because she nominated them as her second home, and she reiterated last night that she had “always regarded” the flats as her second home. When she sold the flats last year for £1.8 million, she made at least £1 million profit, which would have left her with a £180,000 capital gains tax bill if she had declared the flats as her second home to HM Revenue & Customs.

Barry Gardiner, a former environment minister, made £198,500 profit from a flat funded and refurbished at taxpayers’ expense.

The Labour MP for Brent North bought a flat in Pimlico for £246,500 in 2003 and spent more than £11,000 renovating it – and claiming mortgage interest – before selling it for £445,000 in 2007, according to the Land Registry.

He spent £2,000 on decorators and a kitchen was installed. Other receipts covered plumbing and rewiring.

Although the rules say that “extravagant or luxurious” items should be avoided, the MP claimed £235 on bed linen from Harrods and £248 for a Christopher Wray light.

His council tax and mortgage interest costs of around £1,000 a month were also covered by expenses.

Cheaper items included a £65 “mixer tap” and an £80 gas hob. Parliamentary rules state that the additional costs allowance should not be spent on enhancing the property.

During the four financial years that he owned the flat, Mr Gardiner claimed £81,935 – £14 short of the maximum allowance.

Sir Menzies Campbell, the former Liberal Democrat leader, spent £10,000 of taxpayers’ money hiring an interior designer to renovate his small London flat.

The makeover included a flatscreen TV, a king-size bed and scatter cushions for his second home in Dolphin Square near Westminster.

Sir Menzies, once known as ‘moral Ming’ for his old-school rectitude, justified the large raid on the public purse on the basis that he had not used up his second homes allowance in previous years.