Iain Duncan Smith who is cutting housing benefits lives in a mansion FREE!
Tory welfare secretary Iain Duncan Smith - the man slashing housing benefit for hard-up families - is living in a £2million Tudor country pile for FREE.
Unlike worried Britons facing homelessness because of his savage cuts, the former Tory leader, 56, has the run of a palatial home which doesn't cost him a single penny in rent or mortgage.
The Grade II listed building, complete with swimming pool, tennis court and five acres of gardens, is the ancestral home of his wife Betsy's multimillionaire aristocratic family.
Not only does the house come free, he doesn't have to worry about his four children paying inheritance tax on it because he and his wife are not technically the owners of the 16th Century home, in Swanbourne, Buckinghamshire.
He was given use of the mansion by his father-in-law, Baron Cottesloe. It was traditionally the focal point of life in the village where the Cottesloes own 1,300 acres of prime farmland as well as the pub, post office, a private school and many of the houses.
Until 2001 the mansion was home to Mrs Duncan Smith's father, Commander John Tapling Fremantle, 87, the fifth Baron Cottesloe.
The Baron and his wife then moved to another of their homes in the village and the Duncan Smiths moved in with their children Edward, Alicia, Harry and Rosanna.
The Baron retained ownership of the house until 2005, when it was signed over to be owned jointly by Mrs Duncan Smith's brother Thomas, her cousin Richard Brooks and Paul Knocker, a millionaire friend of the Baron.
Mrs Duncan Smith's brother is listed on the electoral roll as living at the house, but is understood to spend most of his time at a property 50 miles away in Hampstead, north London.
Mr Brooks lives in a stately home in Wistow, Leicestershire, and Conservative activist Mr Knocker, 74, lives in a £650,000 country home near Salisbury, Wilts.
According to land registry records, the three men "paid" £1million for the Duncan Smiths' house in 2005, but it is unclear how the money changed hands.
Mrs Duncan Smith is the Baron's eldest child and could stand to inherit the lion's share of the family wealth.
She is already a major shareholder in the family property firm Thomas Tapling & Co, which has investment assets worth £1.1million and owns farms, shops and businesses across England worth £4.5million.
A local said of Mr Duncan Smith, son of an Army officer: "He married himself into one of the most distinguished and wealthy aristocratic families in the UK."
Mr Duncan Smith met Betsy when she was working in Harrods after leaving her expensive boarding school.
They lived in a townhouse in Fulham, south-west London, but sold it for £721,000 in 2002 after moving into the huge ancestral house in Swanbourne.
Mr Duncan Smith commutes between Westminster, Swanbourne and his constituency of Chingford
and Woodford Green on the wealthier fringes of east London, where he rents a flat in a converted house.
Housing cuts IDS gets his mansion free - Mirror Online