This

http://www.parliamentary-standards.org.uk/ViewAggregateData2014.aspx?mcode=0167&year=2013

is a summary of Hugo Swire’s expenses claimed in the 2013-14 Parliamentary year. It can be seen that he has claimed near to the maximum amount allowed for staff payroll costs, including the salary he pays his wife (up to £35,000).

What is striking is how little he paid for office costs “the costs of renting, equipping and running an MPs office and surgeries” in his constituency. Allowed a maximum of £22,750 he had spent only £7,011.52.

Is his office particularly cheap to run – or is it that he spends so little time here he doesn’t need much in the way of office or local surgery expenses?

and speaking of paying wives (which is allowed but which few MPs choose to do) the arch-Conservative blogger Guido Fawkes had this to say about the practice:

Keeping “IT”* in the family

MPs will protest that they pay their spouse / son / daughter / sibling a pittance and they work extra long hours and suchlike. The truth is they deny someone more competent the chance of a job won in open competition. Many MPs really use the staff allowance as a subsidy to family members. Who can forget Derek Conway’s lavish family staffing arrangements, with payments to offspring at university? Peter Hain’s employment of his octogenarian mother despite having a staff of civil servants, special advisers, private secretaries, secretaries and case workers. Bob Spink famously employed his former wife, his lover and her daughter.

*The ‘it’ being our taxes.
http://order-order.com/2010/08/25/keeping-it-in-the-family/#_@/as_aAd6GhnIn/Q