This Sussex MP is so determined to keep her expenses down she has been sleeping in her House of Commons office.

Laura Moffatt, Labour MP for Crawley, revealed her unusual sleeping habits as she published the full details of her expense claims over a 12-month period on her website.

The claims cover the financial year 2007/8, during which she claimed a total of £18,387 for the costs of staying away from her main home to carry out her Parliamentary duties.

For most of the year Ms Moffatt kept a London flat at taxpayers’ expense - claiming more than £1,300 a month in rent.

The MP regularly claimed for food, council tax and utility bills.

She also successfully claimed £31 for towels and bed linens from the House of Fraser department store - her only claim for “personal goods” over the 12-month period.

However, in February 2008, amid growing public disquiet about MPs’ expenses, she wrote a note to the Fees Office informing officials she had given up the London flat.

Ms Moffatt told The Argus that because she no longer had a second home, her total claim under the additional costs allowance for 2008/9, which is due to be published officially in the autumn, would be just £38 - for an outstanding electricity bill on her former flat.

She said: “Since getting rid of my flat I more often sleep on a camp bed in my office when the House sits late (more than once a week) rather than book into a hotel.

“I have always believed it is wrong for public servants to make money out of the public purse and I do not defend anyone who does so.

“In the 12 years that I have been an MP I rented a flat for about 2½ years when the late night/early morning commuting became too much but gave it up because the annual cost did not sit comfortably with me.”

She added: “I completely sympathise with the anger felt by many in the UK about the kinds of things some MPs have claimed for.”

Full details of how politicians have spent millions of pounds of public money living away from their main homes over a four-year period are due to be published by the Commons authorities within weeks but pressure is growing on MPs to come clean and release their own details earlier.

It follows a series of disclosures by the Telegraph Media Group, which has obtained a copy of all MPs’ receipts going back four years and is revealing details of MPs’ expense claims every day. Ms Moffatt’s decision to break cover and place her claims for one year online will ramp up the pressure on her Sussex colleagues. The other three years of her claims under the additional costs allowance, dating back to 2004/5, are expected to be up on her website www.lauramoffattmp.co.uk once the private details of her staff have been removed within the next few days.