Pictured: Inside the luxury £1.2m council house
... complete with 50-inch plasma TV

By Beth Hale

The Afghan family living in a £1.2million home paid for by the taxpayer has managed to stock it with hi-tech gadgets and a plasma screen television.
It was revealed last week that mother of seven Toorpaki Saiedi, 35, receives £170,000 a year in benefits.

A staggering £150,000 of that is paid to a private landlord for the rent of the imposing seven-bedroom house in West London.

Mrs Saiedi has told reporters she is too broke to have satellite TV and pay some of her household bills because the home costs too much to heat and run.
But as these photographs show the family has managed to procure a 50-inch flatscreen plasma television worth £1,500.

Meanwhile the floor is covered by a beautiful Persian-style rug and scattered around the room are a collection of creamy-coloured cushions made of what appears to be silk

Hooked up to the television is the first of more than one expensive piece of computer games technology  - a £180 Nintendo Wii console complete with extra games costing £40 each.
In a second reception there is a smaller TV and a £300 Playstation 3 with five more games that sell for about £40 in the shops.

A visit to the house last week revealed other games dotted around the house intended for use in a handheld Nintendo DS, which retails for about £100, along with two laptop computers estimated to be worth at least  £350 each.

As well as the seven bedrooms there are two kitchens, a breakfast room, three shower rooms and the two living rooms.
Mrs Saiedi's son Jawad, 20, has two mobile phones including an iPhone, which is £500 new. She says, however, that she can only afford to shop at budget stores.

'I spend £150 a week on food and my kids tell me when there are two-for-one offers at the shops,' she told the News of the World.
'But by the end of the week there is no money left. It's a big house and costs a lot to run. It's difficult making it all work. And we don't have Sky TV.'

She also admitted to clocking up debts on a credit card, despite having no job, and has an outstanding water bill of  £530. Mrs Saiedi receives £213 a week in child tax credit, £60 in child benefit plus £60 income support. Her £12,458-amonth rent is paid by the council to landlord Ajit Panesar.
She said: 'Every family here has a plasma TV so it's perfectly normal for us to have one as well.'

Jawad, who claims to have got the TV 'cheap off a friend', said the family paid for their high-tech goods by budgeting their benefit money. He said that he made extra cash buying and selling cars, 'but officially I'm not earning anything so I'm officially unemployed'.
Mrs Saiedi came to the UK with her seven children in 2001, a year after her husband Haji Rahmat Shah Saiedi, 45, had arrived in London and claimed asylum.

He now lives apart from his family, who were in two smaller, taxpayerfunded homes before this one.
The Work and Pensions Secretary James Purnell has demanded a report into the case from Ealing Council.