£10,000 Westminster portrait wasn’t my idea, insists Clegg

The Sheffield Hallam MP and Liberal Democrat leader has come under fire for agreeing to the portrait, commissioned by a committee of MPs which advises Speaker John Bercow.

It comes weeks after MPs were criticised for spending £250,000 on portraits of a number of fellow parliamentarians, including a picture of Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith.

Labour MP Simon Danczuk said that if Mr Clegg refused to decline “this outrageous extravagance”, it would prove how “out of touch” he was with hard-working families.

The Rochdale MP told a newspaper: “Past decisions on Commons arts commissions are one thing but going ahead with this in such economically difficult times cannot be justified. With hard-working people struggling to make ends meet, this is no time for Nick Clegg to let the taxpayer fork out a small fortune just so he can be immortalised in oils.”

A spokesman for Mr Clegg said: “Decisions on portraits, including this one, are made entirely by the independent Speaker’s Committee and not by the Government or the Deputy Prime Minister.

“Party leaders and Cabinet Ministers are often selected and the Deputy Prime Minister’s Office agreed to the request from the Committee on that basis.

“The timescale, the cost and the artist commissioned to do the work are all dictated by the Committee.”

The Deputy Prime Minister is today leading a business delegation to Colombia and Mexico in a bid to forge stronger trade links with the countries, saying the UK “took its eye off the Latin American ball”.

Mr Clegg is joined by Conservative Investment Minister Lord Livingston and Mexico Trade Envoy Lib Dem peer Baroness Bonham-Carter, as well as more than 40 UK business leaders, seeking to tap into the investment potential of the two emerging economies.

Mr Clegg said that Britain’s presence in Colombia and Mexico had been “too small, too reticent and too modest for far too long” while the influence of the two countries was increasing at “an incredible rate”.