Staff’s £1.5k pub bill using Commons credit cards

COMMONS staff used official credit cards to spend £1,500 on pub trips listed as “educational and parliamentary outreach”.

And £140 from visits to the cinema was claimed as “office supplies”, documents revealed yesterday. A football kit and a book on facial hair were also among items bought by staff using government credit cards to pay for “business expenses”.

A Freedom of Information reply showed House of Commons & Parliamentary Digital Service staff spent £630,000 using 205 cards in two years. A spokesman for the House of Commons said all purchases were “genuine business transactions”.

The spokesman added: “Procurement cards allow members of the service to pay for low-value items in a cheap, secure and quick way. Failure to follow procedures may result in a card being withdrawn.”

A separate 2016 audit report, also released to the BBC, looked at a sample of 50 spends made by Commons staff and found 21 were for prohibited purposes.