From the Telegraph

Mr Brown learnt that several ministers, including Alistair Darling, Geoff Hoon and Hazel Blears, had kitted out more than one house at taxpayers’ expense by switching their designated second home from London to their constituency – a process which everyone now knows as “flipping” after the Telegraph coined the term the next day.

Mr Hoon, the Transport Secretary, had built up a £1.7 million property empire with the help of public money; Alistair Darling, the Chancellor, had billed the taxpayer for almost £10,000 in stamp duty and other costs for buying a new home before he “flipped” his address, and Hazel Blears, the Communities Secretary, had avoided paying £13,000 in capital gains tax when she sold her “second” home by telling the taxman it was, in fact, her main residence.

Jack Straw, the Justice Secretary, alerted the Prime Minister to the fact that he had claimed back twice the amount of council tax he had actually paid, and had sent the money back to the parliamentary fees office with a note admitting that “accountancy does not appear to be my strongest suit”.

Others faced accusations of sheer greed: Margaret Beckett, the Housing Minister, spent £72,500 on her constituency home in four years, despite having no mortgage. She had even tried to claim £600 for hanging baskets and pot plants. Lord Mandelson, the Business Secretary, put in bills for £3,000 of work on his Hartlepool home after he announced he was quitting as an MP. David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, had been asked by his own gardener if all the work he was doing was really necessary.

John Prescott proved a headline writer’s dream yet again by claiming back the cost of having broken lavatory seats repaired twice in the space of two years, and submitting a bill for £312 to supply and fit three mock Tudor beams to a gable on the front of his house. It also turned out that the former deputy prime minister, who has admitted suffering from bulimia, claimed the maximum possible amount for food – £4,800 per year.

The expense claims revealed when the Telegraph’s first edition came out late that night ranged from the outrageous to the downright surreal. They included jellied eels, dog food, eyeliner, Ginger Crinkle biscuits, Maltesers and a chocolate Father Christmas.

Harriet Harman, the Leader of the House, who, as a London MP, was unable to claim a second homes allowance and hence was one of the only Cabinet ministers not directly caught up in the scandal, was despatched to a BBC studio to carry out damage limitation. She found herself being harangued on Newsnight about why one MP had claimed back the 5p cost of a carrier bag. It was, she insisted, “all within the rules” – a familiar refrain in the days to come which did nothing but infuriate taxpayers whose money had been converted into everything from plasma screen TVs to glittery lavatory seats. Back in Downing Street, Mr Brown was incandescent as he watched the Cabinet exposed to a toxic combination of outrage and ridicule as news channels cleared their schedules to follow the Telegraph’s scoop.

“The Prime Minister felt that he was being persecuted,” said one MP close to Mr Brown. “There was genuine anger from him which didn’t abate during the course of the day.”

For more than a week before the Telegraph published details of its investigation, a team of 10 reporters had been working in total secrecy in a back room at the newspaper’s headquarters in Victoria, central London, piecing together evidence of systematic abuse within the parliamentary expenses system.

Even the most experienced journalists on the team were left incredulous by what emerged. Not only were MPs claiming public money for such fripperies as home cinema systems, antique rugs, silk cushions and ride-on mower servicing, some were guilty of dreaming up scams which in some cases netted them tens of thousands of pounds. As well as the numerous MPs who were guilty of “flipping” their homes, others had climbed the property ladder by buying and selling houses which they renovated at the taxpayers’ expense, or of furnishing two houses by claiming items for their “second” home but having it delivered to their first. Some went on shopping sprees in March, the last month of the financial year, to “use up” any allowances they had not yet claimed, and many claimed their main family home as their “second” home to recoup the cost of expensive mortgage interest payments and household bills, while telling Parliament their “main” home was a poky flat or rented bedroom.

Even Gordon Brown himself had “flipped” his address from his London flat to his Scottish constituency house when he took up residence in Downing Street, enabling him to continue claiming expenses.