A PALIAMENTARY watchdog has apologised to Edward Timpson after he was been named and shamed by for failing to pay his expenses.

Mr Timpson, the MP for Crewe and Nantwich, was one of 26 current and former MPs who were named by the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (IPSA).

The authority revealed that Mr Timpson had claimed £127.70 in 'public transport' paid for on a taxpayer-backed card.

Following the list of name’s being published, a spokesman for Mr Timpson said: "Mr Timpson is sending £127.70 to IPSA today."

However, it has since come to light that he later ticked a box on a form to indicate he did not want to claim this as expenses.

After realising of their error, IPSA’s chief executive, Marcial Boo, wrote a letter of apology to the Crewe and Nantwich MP.

The letter said: "Due to an error in our system the £127.70 still appeared to be outstanding when we looked at the data again, so it was written off.

"I apologise that we did not resolve this error sooner. We will now amend our published data to reflect this.”

Last year, MP expense debts totalling £2,105.43, were written off due to none payment, according to IPSA.

Some MPs had expense debts of up £500 written off last year after failing to pay up.

According to the watchdog, this is despite several attempts at trying to retrieve the owed funds and warnings their names would be published if they didn’t stump up the cash.

The claims were rejected because they were either ‘not allowable under IPSA rules’ or had ‘insufficient evidence to support the claim’.

Some of the reasons expenses failed included the submission of receipts for London hotel stays, food and drink, rail cards and constituency phone bills.

Prime Minister David Cameron said he expects ministers to pay back any invalid expense claims.

A Downing Street spokesman said: "The Prime Minister's view is that he expects any ministers who owe money to pay it back.

"I think a number of ministers are intending to do so."