MILITARY TOP BRASS TRAVEL OVER THE TOP

£5m is blown on exes

MILITARY top brass spent more than £5million of taxpayers’ money on travel expenses in just one month.

The spending spree also included a huge amount on oversea car hire, all on government credit cards with a limit of £500.

In total, Armed Forces personnel spent a £5,542,537 during December last year.

A staggering £3,405,282 of this was on scheduled air-fares, with

£1,056,874 forked out on rail tickets. Other payments include

£555,709 on overseas car hire for UK armed forces based in areas such the Baltic States, the Falklands, Gibraltar and Jordan.

A breakdown of the car hire bill suggests the military used

120 cards every day throughout the festive month.

They also spent £449,000 on lowcost carriers, £65,205 on hotels and a whopping £10,464 on booking fees. The shocking total of £5m is enough to run a Type-23 Duke class frigate for a year, buy five million SA80 assault rifle bullets or fund two RAF recruiting campaigns.

This comes as Treasury sources suggested the Queen Elizabeth class HMS Prince of Wales may need to be delayed in order to balance the fleet’s budget.

A senior military source said: “To make it worse, some of these orders for hotels, flights and cars are booked but not used.

“The military is spending huge sums on travel, despite the fact that we have a tiny workforce of less than 130,000 across the Army, Navy and Air Force.

“There are 57,000 civil servants at the Ministry of Defence and I suspect many of these expenses have been run up by them, particularly the first class rail and air fares.”

The payouts come amid shortages of ammunition.

An MoD spokesperson said: “Staff are sometimes required to travel in order to fulfil their duties and we always try to keep costs to a minimum.”

He added: “We always expect our staff to demonstrate the highest standards of responsibility when incurring travel expenses.”