Former Prime Minister Tony Blair has made a £2million profit on the London mansion he bought with help from the taxpayers, the Daily Mail reports.

Estate agents estimate the luxury 19th century home in Connaught Square is worth £6.6million. When Blair and his wife Cherie bought the townhouse, close to Hyde Park, in October 2004 it cost £3.65million.

In 2007, they bought the adjoining mews house for £800,000 – so the couple have forked out a total of £4.45million for the high-security property.

Based on the recent sale of an unmodernised house also in Connaught Square, experts believe the Blairs’ home, which has been extensively renovated, has risen in value by more than £2.1million.

Controversially, the taxpayer has helped the pair pay for the home. In 2003, the then prime minister remortgaged his constituency home in Trimdon, County Durham, for a second time. It allowed him to secure a £296,000 loan from Cheltenham & Gloucester – almost ten times what he paid for it.

It was enough to cover the £182,500 deposit he put down on the London townhouse, which was also bought with a mortgage from the same building society.

But Blair was able to claim the mortgage interest on the Trimdon home on his Parliamentary expenses. Between 2003 and when he left Downing Street and quit as Sedgefield MP in 2007, he was able to claim thousands of pounds a year tax-free from his Parliamentary expenses.

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