Doncaster born Tory MP Phillip Davies and wife Esther McVey take £18,000 of VIP tickets

Phillip Davies and Esther McVey have both declared free entry for horse racing, motorsport, football and tennis events, with many of the gifts coming from gambling firms.

Parliamentary expenses figures shows McVey, MP for Tatton, accepted two tickets to the British Grand Prix at Silverstone worth £2,950, provided by the circuit’s owner.

Both she and her husband also declared tickets and hospitality for Royal Ascot on June 15, worth £750 each, donated by horse breeding firm Normandie Stud.

Doncaster born Davies, MP for Shipley and son of former Doncaster elected mayor Peter Davies, came back to the prestigious racing event on June 17, declaring a ticket and hospitality worth £1,400.

The couple also went to watch England play Czech Republic for the Three Lions’ final group match of the Euro 2020 tournament on June 22.

The tickets were worth £1,537.60 each and were provided by online casino firm Gamesys, the Mirror reports.

Then on July 5, the couple went to watch Novak Djokovic beat Denis Kudla in the third round of the Men’s singles.

Tickets cost £1,100 each and were paid for by gambling company Entain, who also covered tickets worth £3,457.00 each for the Euro semi final between England and Denmark the following week.

According to the latest parliamentary expenses, 65 Conservative MPs declared almost £160,000 in free tickets between May and July.

This compares to 23 Labour MPs declaring £31,921 worth. In total MPs have claimed £197,369.91 in free tickets and hospitality for sport and music events this year.

Last year Davies was paid almost £50,000 as an advisor to Entain, known as GVC Holdings at the time.

In order to avoid a conflict of interest, he said he had stepped down as a member of the Commons Culture Committee at the time, because it investigates issues related to gambling.

He told his local paper, the Telegraph and Argus: ‘In the contract I signed I explicitly insisted that a clause was put in there to say that I would be forbidden from doing any lobbying on behalf of GVC, which is completely against the rules.”