Tory ministers have been accused of overseeing a “lavish spending culture” after it emerged officials spent nearly £150 million on government credit cards in a year.
Almost £345,000 was spent by Foreign Office officials in 2021 under the heading “restaurants and bars”.
Labour has compiled a dossier on the use of the government procurement cards (GPCs) which showed that at least £145.5 million was spent across major Whitehall departments in 2021. That was up from £84.9 million in 2010/11.
That included the Treasury spending £3,393 on 13 fine art photographs from The Tate Gallery when Rishi Sunak was chancellor - despite ministries having access to the government’s official art collection.
A total of £1.51 million was spent with Amazon, almost £238,000 at Ikea, nearly £106,000 at John Lewis and more than £101,000 at Apple on the GPCs.
Labour also accused the government of “unchecked spending sprees” as departments used up their budgets at the end of the financial year.
That included the Department of Health and Social Care spending £59,155 on items of stationery in March 2021, compared to just £1,470 in the whole of the rest of the year combined.
Then attorney general Suella Braverman and her Ukrainian counterpart visited fine dining Indian restaurant The Cinnamon Club in Westminster along with six others in May 2022 at a cost of £909 – just under £114 a head.
The rules on GPC use were relaxed at the start of the Covid pandemic, allowing individual card-holders to spend up to £20,000 per transaction and £100,000 per month, and permitting the use of GPCs across all categories of spending.
Labour uncovered the spending through hundreds of freedom of information requests and parliamentary questions.
Angela Rayner, the party’s deputy leader, said: “Britain may be facing the worst cost of living crisis for decades, but whether as Chancellor or Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak has failed to rein in the culture of lavish spending across Whitehall on his watch.
“Today’s shocking revelations lift the lid on a scandalous catalogue of waste, with taxpayers’ money frittered away across every part of government, while in the rest of the country, families are sick with worry about whether their pay cheque will cover their next weekly shop or the next tranche of bills.
“A Labour government will get tough on waste, with an Office of Value for Money upholding transparency and high standards for all public spending, including on government procurement cards.”
A senior Conservative source said: “Awkwardly for Labour HQ they’ve forgotten that they introduced these ‘civil servant credit cards’ in 1997.
“By 2010 Labour was spending almost £1 billion of taxpayers’ money on everything from dinners at Mr Chu’s Chinese restaurant to luxury five-star hotels.
“The Conservatives swiftly stopped their absurd profligacy, cutting the number of cards, introducing a requirement for spending to be publicly declared and introducing controls.
“Typically, Labour’s ‘big idea’ is to spend millions to establish yet another quango, stuff it with thousands of bureaucrats and give them gold plated pensions.”