Newly elected Wells MP Tessa Munt has said she is being targeted by a "concerted campaign" over allegations she claimed a single occupier discount on her council tax, despite allowing friends to stay in her home whilst she was in receipt of the benefit. However Ms Munt claims they stayed for just 9 days in a total of 10 months.
BBC Somerset reports today that a website has apprently been set up demanding her removal as an MP and a petition has been drafted calling on Nick Clegg to force her to stand down.
Asserting that she has always been "completely upfront" about the people who stayed with her, including the broadcaster Andy Kershaw, she denies any sleaze and says it is quite right that Sedgemoor District Council investigate her, as they would anyone else. She is simply calling for the right to the same privacy as any other person would have.
Tessa Munt won the seat in the 2010 UK election as a Liberal Democrat. Following a hard-fought campaign she gained a majority of 800 over long-term Conservative incumbent David Heathcoat-Amory who himself admitted that his involvement in the parliamentary expenses scandal had probably cost him victory. She has always been in favour of the Lib Dem Coalition pact with the Conservatives.
