Ministers blow £400k on taxis for their red boxes
MINISTERS have spent almost £400,000 having briefcases chauffeured around Whitehall.
The “wasteful” car trips have been branded “another broken promise”.
No passengers are carried by the taxpayer-funded limousines used for journeys – just the red boxes ministers are given to carry paperwork.
Yet £397,852 has been spent on more than 4,000 trips in the six years since the Tories pledged to cut waste and move to paperless working.
And the cost of ferrying documents between offices and ministers’ homes in 2016/17 was £44,010 – £3,000 more than the year before.
Labour MP Luke Pollard said: “Yet another Tory broken promise. They said they’d clamp down on waste but the cost of ferrying ministers’ red boxes round in air-conditioned luxury cars has increased.” The Department for Transport said: “We have cut the costs of transporting dispatch boxes by over half from £110,865 in 2011/12 to £44,001 in 2016/17.”