MEMBERS of Parliament could be driven to commit suicide over the allowances debacle, claims New Forest West MP Desmond Swayne.

“The gallows humour has gone now. Now the atmosphere is suicidal,” he said on a visit to Lymington yesterday.

Mr Swayne said: “We are all in fear of a phone call from the Telegraph.

They are going to systematically go to work through the lot of us.”

He said some MPs could end up in prison.

“I can see some of these people are going to end up in jug; I can see it,” he said.

“I’m ashamed both collectively and individually, because we’ve all operated in this rotten system and not done anything about it, so there’s an element of guilt that I share.

“I’ve always tried to reduce my expenses when I can in order to maintain my position at the bottom of the list.”

In his opinion the Fees Office is responsible for encouraging MPs to claim up to the hilt to make up for frozen salaries.

“It’s never popular to pay MPs more, so the way they got around it was the allowance,”

he said.

He said he could understand the reason why some MPs “flipped” their second residences because it cost him £10,000 to move to a smaller London flat with fewer outgoings.

“I could have charged, legitimately, all these costs to the taxpayer on my allowance. You can see the attraction.”

He said many constituents had written to him suggesting MPs stay in halls of residence when in the capital but said the security bill would be massive because it would be “a target for every terrorist”.