MPs have spent £250,000 of taxpayers’ cash on portraits dubbed an “expensive vanity project”.
Records released under the Freedom of Information Act show the bill for a painting of North East Fife MP and former Liberal Democrat leader Sir Menzies Campbell cost £10,346.
The charge to recreate Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith came in at £10,000, while other big spends included a portrait of Commons Speaker John Bercow, which cost £22,000 to commission, with an extra £15,000 for a frame and coat of arms in keeping with other paintings in the Speaker’s House.
Jonathan Isaby, chief executive of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, told The Courier: “Regularly splashing out four or five-figure sums for these portraits has the whiff of an expensive vanity project, for which unwitting taxpayers are footing the bill.
“When photographs are so much cheaper than paintings, politicians need to think twice about spending our money immortalising themselves or their friends on canvas, or even in bronze.”
A House of Commons spokesman said: “The Parliamentary Art Collection at the House of Commons records those who have made a significant contribution to UK political life over the centuries and in each parliament the Speaker’s Advisory Committee on Works of Art endeavours to update this record by adding to the contemporary portrait collection.”