Diplomats’ fleet of electric Jaguars to cost us £2m

GIVING British diplomats electric cars and installing charging points at embassies is to cost the taxpayer £2million.

The Foreign Office is replacing 30 fuelguzzling vehicles with £ 48,000 Jaguar I-Paces as it aims to become the ‘greenest diplomatic service in the world’.

The news follows the revelation that police have spent millions of pounds on electric cars that cannot be used to chase suspects. Official reports conceded that the vehicles could not meet the demands of urgent response or pursuit driving.

Critics warned the Government must demonstrate it is not wasting cash in the interests of ‘going green’. Jeremy Hutton of the TaxPayers’ Alliance said: ‘It should only be done so when taxpayers are not stung with bad value for their money... switching over to other options shouldn’t just be about signalling virtue, it should be good for taxpayers too.’

Foreign Office officials insisted the green fleet will cost 30 per cent less than the Jaguar XJs they will replace over the course of the cars’ use. The UK’s embassies in Norway

and the Vatican City have already received their new vehicles, with 30 posts expected to have taken deliveries by April.

Foreign Office mandarin Sir Simon McDonald said: ‘Climate change is the greatest challenge of our time, and our fleet is a high-profile tool for demonstrating the UK’s international leadership on climate change diplomacy. I want us to be the greenest diplomatic service in the world... shifting our vehicles away from petrol to all-electric will help us achieve this.’

Government targets indicate a quarter of all public sector vehicles should be electric by 2022, rising to 100 per cent by 2030.

The Daily Mail revealed this week that UK police forces have bought at least 448 environmentally-friendly vehicles to help meet these energy targets – but almost all of the cars and vans are now being used in nonemergency situations only.