Taxi Driver Online

Mail on Sunday (London)

August 6, 2006 Sunday

HEADLINE: TAXIS 17 TIMES ROUND WORLD;

What ONE Ministry took last year

BYLINE: CHRISTOPHER LEAKE

HOME OFFICE staff have spent more than Pounds 800,000 on taxi fares in the past year clocking up enough chauffeur-driven miles to travel 17 times around the globe.

The statistic, forced out of embarrassed Ministers by a Commons question, was seized upon as 'the very embodiment' of spiralling government waste.

Earlier this year the Home Office was accused by the public spending watchdog, the National Audit Office, of showing 'casual disregard' for taxpayers' money over its accounts. John Reid, the recently appointed Home Secretary, declared his new department 'unfit for purpose'.

The latest revelation led to fresh demands for a dramatic shake-up within Whitehall.

Shadow Home Affairs Minister Edward Garnier said: 'At a time when the National Audit Office has refused to sign off the Home Office's accounts and when the Chancellor has frozen the Home Office's budget, the department should be making sure that every penny of taxpayers' money is efficiently spent.' The extraordinary statistic demonstrates how taxi spending has multiplied over recent years. The journeys represent a 162 per cent increase over five years ago, when the department's bill was Pounds 307,000.

Most of the taxi rides enjoyed by Home Office civil servants are thought to have been taken in London, where Home Office headquarters staff and its Ministers are based. The department has not provided details of the trips taken.

Latest figures from Transport for London show that a taxi fare in the capital costs Pounds 1.87 per mile. On this basis, last year's total bill of Pounds 806,000 would pay for more than 431,000 miles in a taxi the equivalent of just over 17 trips around the globe.

The Home Office said: 'Staff are required to justify the use of taxi journeys to their managers to ensure that their use is in accordance with the rules. This includes that the journeys were necessary and arranged so that a minimum of expense was incurred.' The revelation was last night seen as yet more alarming evidence of financial profligacy in New Labour's Whitehall.

In May last year the Management Consultancies Association revealed that spending by Labour on external advisers has spiralled to Pounds 1.9billion a year 46 per cent higher than in 2003.

And the Department for Work and Pensions has spent Pounds 323million on office furniture since 1997.
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