Letter from Vera Baird MP to the editor of the Daily Telegraph: Dear Editor, I am writing to rebalance the unfair article about my expenses as an MP (Daily Telegraph, Saturday) You write "In order to claim Additional Costs Allowance she designates a flat in Crouch End, North London as her main home and nominates a four bedroom house in her constituency as her second residence"

I don't have my house in Redcar "in order to claim" allowances. I have it because I want to live in my lovely constituency whenever I can to do my job properly. It would be hard for most people to pay for two houses and only the well to do could be MPs if there weren't Parliamentary money for this, because obviously the job requires MPs to work in two places. There is no point in this aspect of your article except smearing because one or other of the places I live would be designated a second home and the London one would be much more costly because everything in London is dearer than in the North-East.

You also relate that three items were turned down by the Commons expenses department and say: "However she did manage to get tens of thousands of public money to pay for a new roof, flooring, windows and a porch at her second home"

It is "manage to get" which is the second slur in this article, a misguided allegation that I have struggled to try to get cash. I keep my Redcar house in a reasonably sound state to live in. I pay for everything myself and then the fees office decides what I can reclaim. I have got it right most of the time since few claims have been rejected, over the last seven years. There should be no discredit in having a claim rejected. Determining the boundaries of claims is exactly what the fees office is for.

This is the system of expenses which is set down for MPs. If it needs to change, so be it, but the innuendoes in your article are wrong.

Yours, Vera Baird MP