I refer to the letter attacking me in a recent edition of the Times over my allowances (‘Dismore’s claims are shocking’, Your Views, June 25).

Dealing firstly with “food” claims, nobody has subsidised my supermarket bills. The reason this was permitted to be claimed is that unlike most people, who can go home for an evening meal, we have to eat in parliament, due to sitting hours well into the evening.

Equally, the hours that I work at weekends in the constituency, on which my claims are based, reflect a similar problem. Nevertheless, I have given up my right to claim this allowance (which I consistently underclaimed) long before the reports arose.

As far as the accountant is concerned, if all I had to complete was a simple tax return with my income, then I would not need assistance to complete it.

However, MPs are subject to a very peculiar tax regime, because we are, in the end, employees paying tax under schedule E (the easy part), but also employers, running what is effectively a small business at the same time.

This is what makes the tax return complicated, and requires accountancy assistance to complete. We have to do a very complicated form of “double entry” of the allowances we receive for staffing, office costs and so on, and the amounts spent out of them, as well as having to account separately for capital items including depreciation from previous years.

This is all difficult for a non-accountant to do, far more complicated than many small business accounts I have seen. This is why an accountant is needed — to make sure we are paying for the correct amount of tax. It is nothing to do with tax avoidance.

In fact, the cost of accountancy is treated as a benefit in kind, and we are taxed on it, as though it was part of our income.

I do not know many small business people who are in the position of having to pay income tax on their accountancy fees, which are normally tax deductible for anyone else in similar circumstances.

As far as petty cash is concerned, I run two offices, in Hendon and Westminster. Some months, I claimed £200. Some months, I didn’t claim at all. Other months, sums in between.

While the House of Commons authorities didn’t require dockets, I do, from my staff and myself to record expenditure on petty cash.

Last year, the total claimed between two offices was £700 — and over the four years of published records, little more than £1 per day, per office on average — hardly an excessive claim.

Andrew Dismore, Labour MP for Hendon