When Lyn Brown was elected MP for West Ham in 2005, it seemed she would be an improvement on her outspoken predecessor Tony Banks who had stunned even his supporters by complaining on retirement that 22 years of helping his constituents with their problems had been “intellectually numbing, tedious in the extreme” (here)

Ms Brown is a Newham-girl-made-good and it was reckoned that after Tony Banks she would be a breath of compassionate fresh air, who could easily identify with local people and their issues. And so it seemed – until the expenses scandal hit home and she was exposed as having claimed for a second home near Parliament when her first home in Plaistow is less than 7 miles away. It’s a luxury funded by the taxpayer that not many of her constituents who also work late in central London – such as nurses, cleaners and hotel receptionists – can afford.

(The News Of The World also reckons Lyn Brown claimed for two SatNav systems purchased on the same day (here). However Ms Brown says one system was faulty and had to be returned. Ah, so that’s all right then: using just the one taxpayer-funded SatNav system, Ms Brown can navigate between her first and second homes without getting lost, to the great benefit of us all.)

It’s been interesting to see how Lyn Brown has responded to the second-home exposure and the change in her reputation from ‘local-girl-made-good’ to ‘MP-on-the-make’.

At first she took a back-handed side-swipe at her fellow local Labour MPs, Stephen Timms and Jim Fitzpatrick, both of whom are government ministers and neither of whom claims for a second home. (Actually Fitzpatrick can’t, as over half of his constituency is in the inner London borough of Tower Hamlets.) Ms Brown explained that she needs the second home as she doesn’t have a ministerial car to get her home late at night!

When Stephen Timms made it clear that he rarely uses the ministerial car at home and that he commutes to work like his constituents, Ms Brown tried another tack. She put a story in the Newham Recorder (here) about how she had been attacked when a young woman and how this still affects her life choices today; the second home enables her “to manage late night and early morning working in the Commons” without concerns over her safety.

Certainly we can sympathise with her in her on-going distress from the attack. But many of her constituents who work in central London either fear or have experienced similar attacks. And they don’t have the luxury of a second home courtesy of the public purse; they have to use public transport.

No, the Recorder article was simply a cynical and nauseating use of the victim card by Ms Brown that demeaned her as an MP and as a modern independent woman. If personal security was her issue, why didn’t she book women-only taxis and take personal safety advice from the respected Suzy Lamplugh Trust (here) like any sensible citizen? Doh!

She is clearly out of her depth, caught on the make, panicking in the spotlight and grabbing at any excuse for milking the Parliamentary expenses system.

Like the brazen Hazel Blears with her repayment cheque, Lyn Brown has publicly denied but tacitly admitted she has done wrong – in her case by announcing she is giving up her Westminster flat.

But she needn’t have worried. She’s since been well compensated. Gordon Brown has just appointed her an Assistant Government Whip.

Does anyone know whether a ministerial car goes with the job?