Labour condemns ‘culture of lavish spending’ under Rishi Sunak as party report reveals govt debit card purchases

The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office’s spending was 3.7 times higher in 2021 – at £34.4m – than the Foreign Office and Department for International Development’s combined spending of £9.3m a decade prior, according to the report

Nine of the 14 departments analysed spent more in the last month of the financial year than any other month of the year, with overall GPC spending more than two-thirds higher in March 2021 than the monthly average for the rest of the year

Labour also found there were 34,661 transactions of over £1,000 in 2021 across the 14 departments

The party named the largest suppliers to departments through GPCs in 2021 too – they included: Banner Stationery (£3.3m); Amazon (£1.51m); Enterprise-Rent-a-Car (£414,785); IKEA (£237,683); Posturite Chairs (£131,652); John Lewis (£105,832); KPMG (£105,014); and Apple (£101,467)

It said the biggest was BFS Group, which provides food supplies to the Prison Service, with sales over £500 worth an overall £54.9m

Labour plan to ‘get tough on waste

Labour said it was concerned about “lax controls” over GPCs and “unchecked spending sprees engaged in by multiple departments across Whitehall at the end of each financial year

It claimed there was “excessive spending” on “extravagant events, expensive restaurants, high-end catering, five-star hotels, lavish gifts and hospitality, luxury furnishings and fabrics, unnecessary corporate branding, non-essential training, high-priced awayday venues, and the purchase of alcohol at taxpayers’ expense

Deputy leader Angela Rayner said the spending was not appropriate during a cost of living crisis

She told Sky News: “We’ve seen scandal and we’ve seen sleaze, we’ve seen billions of pounds wasted under the Conservative government that we have now, and no action to clear up this mess

“[These] cards are a way of bypassing the normal auditing process. And we see when it comes to the end of the financial year, big jumps in the spend and we’ve seen expenditure which is just not justifiable during the cost of living crisis

“So there has to be transparency and there has to be regulation of the use of these cards

Ms Rayner said her party would create an “Office of Value for Money” to “get tough on waste

“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,” she said

“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

Tories hit back at Labour report

Transport minister Richard Holden defended the use of the cards, telling Sky News: “If everything had to be invoiced, you know, you can’t actually do stuff that you need to do and it can be more expensive and add more bureaucracy

“I don’t think what we should do is introduce more bureaucracy, a sort of Jim Hacker style department of Administrative Affairs to administrate the other administrators, which seems to be Labour’s proposal

However, he agreed about the need for transparency over the spending, pointing to the monthly report on what is spent on the cards

“Sunlight is a great disinfectant for this sort of stuff,” added Mr Holden. “And so I think that’s why it’s so important that we’re as transparent as possible with what the government spends