By Abul Taher
24 March 2012Commons Speaker John Bercow has sold his London flat, which taxpayers subsidised, for a profit of more than £600,000.
He reportedly claimed more than £100,000 in mortgage interest payments and service charge costs from parliamentary authorities over a period of six years.
Mr Bercow, 49, jointly owned the three-bedroom property with his wife Sally, 42.
The couple also let the flat from January 2010 for at least a year before selling it. They charged a monthly rent of £2,400, equal to £28,800 a year.
They began renting out the property six months after they moved into the taxpayer-paid grace-and-favour home in the Palace of Westminster which is given to the Speaker.
Emma Boon, of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said: ‘Taxpayers will be enraged that Mr Bercow has made such an eye-watering profit on the sale of a property whose purchase they subsidised for so many years.
'It is absolutely right that the rules are finally changing to stop this practice, which has allowed scores of MPs to buy second homes.’
The Bercows bought the flat in 2003 for £540,000, and sold it in August last year for £1,150,000, making a profit of £610,000.
The flat is on the fifth floor of an imposing Victorian mansion block in Victoria, Central London.The flat was at the centre of a ‘flipping’ row at the height of the MPs' expenses scandal in 2009.
It was reported at the time that Mr Bercow changed the designation of his second home from a house in his Buckingham constituency to the new flat immediately after buying it in 2003.
The ‘flipping’ enabled him to claim the maximum possible allowances for the new flat, which meant £1,000 per month in interest repayments for the mortgage, as well as £1,200 in service charges every three months.
This weekend, Mr Bercow’s spokesman confirmed that he had sold the property, and said that he will pay capital gains tax on the profit.
Capital gains tax – which is currently charged at 28 per cent – is paid by anyone who sells a property that is not their main residence. Mortgage experts believe the Bercows would be likely to pay about £170,800 on the profit.
In 2009, Mr Bercow voluntarily repaid £6,500 in capital gains tax he had avoided during the sale of two properties he owned in Buckinghamshire and London in 2003.
Inquiries at the Land Registry Office show that Mr Bercow now owns only one property in Buckingham, which he and his wife bought for £145,950 in 2003. They put the property up for sale for £180,000 last summer, around the same time as the Victoria flat was on the market, but withdrew it two weeks later without explanation.
