Brentford constituent Ann Berkane, who reported MPs Ann and Alan Keen to parliamentary standards commissioner, says 'they got off lightly' (From This Is Local London)

Brentford constituent Ann Berkane, who reported MPs Ann and Alan Keen to parliamentary standards commissioner, says 'they got off lightly'

11:00am Thursday 18th March 2010 in

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The woman who reported Alan and Ann Keen to the parliamentary standards commissioner said she thought the couple had “got off very lightly”.

Ann Berkane alerted John Lyon in June last year that the Keens had not been living in their designated “main home”, in Brook Road South, Brentford, for more than six months.

She wrote to him saying that Mr Keen, MP for Feltham and Heston, and his wife Ann, MP for Brentford and Isleworth, needed to repay the expenses claims they had made for their second home back to the public purse.

But the indignant 67-year-old said this week she was “disappointed” the standards committee only asked them to return £1,500.

Mrs Berkane, of New Road, Brentford, said: “I was glad that he did find in my favour, all be it they said because it had been approved by the fees office that she (Ann Keen) wasn’t really responsible.

“This woman is a minister for God’s sake, she should know what’s right and what’s wrong. To say it was passed by the fees office is pretty feeble really.

“But that’s how the MPs want to play it, and we will just have to see what happens in the election.”

Determined Mrs Berkane, who works in a pawnbrokers, had also pursued her MP earlier last year when she shopped her to the authorities for misusing £4,500 of parliamentary stationary.

The standards commissioner again upheld her complaint and ordered Mrs Keen to pay the money back.

Mrs Berkane said she was motivated to make formal complaints because she felt angry about the Keens claiming so much of taxpayers’ cash.

She said: “When you see it all in the papers people assume it must be investigated, but unless you make a complaint they don’t actually follow it up, which is rather aweful really when it’s staring you in the face.”

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