De-moated: Douglas Hogg stands down as Tory MP

Steve Webb's fluffy dusters were ridiculous, John Reid's icecube trays absurd and Michael Gove's elephant lamps in questionable taste. But of all the MPs' dodgy expenses claims revealed by the Daily Telegraph in the past fortnight, it was the £2,000 moat-cleaning bill for Kettlethorpe Hall in Lincolnshire - the 'second home' of Conservative MP Douglas Hogg - that took the ginger crinkle biscuit.

Yesterday the 64-year-old Tory grandee who put in that claim to the taxpayer - and under pressure from his party leader repaid it - announced that after 30 years as an MP he would not be standing at the next general election.

Hogg was one of the Tories most at risk the moment David Cameron announced that local Conservative party associations would have the right to oust their MPs and select new candidates for next year's election in the light of the expenses scandal.

Hogg, a former Minister for Agriculture under John Major, and the son of Lord Hailsham, a former lord chancellor, said yesterday: "In view of David Cameron's campaign for an early election - which I strongly support - I have decided that now is the time to tell the Sleaford and North Hykeham Association that I will not be standing in the coming election."

The irony is that Hogg was brought down by the very newspaper that for many years paid the bills of his wife Sarah Hogg, one of Fleet Street's finest. She wrote - brilliantly - on economics for both the Daily and Sunday Telegraph before becoming a senior businesswoman herself as chairman of 3i, the venture capital group.

She became a Tory peer in 1995 - taking the title Baroness Hogg of Kettlethorpe - and was only recently revealed to have claimed £5,594 in overnight expenses because her main home was outside London. Unfortunately this was the very same main home (with moat) that her hubby Douglas was claiming was their second home. Oh dear.