Top No 10 mandarin’s £175,000 expenses in a year
...including £250-a- day limousine and £72,000 delegation trip to China
WHITEHALL’s most powerful mandarin has cost the taxpayer £175,000 in expenses in just one year, The Mail on Sunday can reveal – on top of his £205,000 salary.
The expenses for Cabinet Secretary Sir Mark Sedwill include the use of a taxpayer-funded limousine costing an average of £250 a day.
And a four- day trip to China last May, where he led a delegation of a dozen UK officials, cost more than £72,400.
At the time, a Cabinet Minister labelled the China trip showboating, while last night the Taxpayers’ Alliance described the expenses bill as Whitehall opulence.
Sir Mark’s chauffeur-driven car from the ministerial fleet cost the public purse £22,000 every 90 days last year. That was an average of £10,000 more per quarter than the bill incurred by his predecessor, the late Sir Jeremy Heywood.
Sedwill also claimed £15,000 for additional ‘travel to meetings’ not done in his car.
As an explanation for the large bills, his defenders say that he is ‘ very active in getting out of Whitehall’.
Sir Mark has never been far from controversy during his tenure as Britain’s most senior civil servant. There was uproar when he was appointed to the top job by his ally Theresa May in October 2018 without going through the normal Whitehall recruitment process.
He had been acting Cabinet Secretary since June 2018, but also retained his role as National Security Adviser, sparking accusations that he was ‘double jobbing’.
Despite suggestions from senior Tories that Boris Johnson would seek to oust the powerful mandarin when he took the keys to Downing Street last year, Sir Mark is said to have abandoned a long-held ambition to become the UK’s Ambassador to Washington, and instead wants to remain at the Prime Minister’s side.
Sir Mark’s expenses are published alongside other senior Cabinet Office officials every three months. The figures available cover the period from September 2018 to September last year.
Some of his costs are missing from this Government transparency data, meaning his exact bill for his first year in the job remains unclear.
Last night, Whitehall officials said the missing data was ‘cock-up, not conspiracy’ and would be published in due course.
But furious campaigners accused the bureaucrat of ‘becoming far too reliant on Civil Service perks’.
James Roberts, director of the TaxPayers’ Alliance said: ‘Taxpayers don’t expect their money to be wasted on Whitehall opulence, flying government functionaries to China and giving mandarins free rides in ministerial limos.
‘With a Budget on the horizon and departments being probed for potential savings, these perks seem like a good place to start.’
Last night, the Cabinet Office said: ‘As the leader of over 400,000 civil servants, the Cabinet Secretary visits teams spread across all four nations of the UK. The Government Car Service provides his official transport.’
The spokesman said that 11 Whitehall departmental heads had joined Sir Mark’s delegation to China, adding: ‘ The expenses declared was the total cost for all the Permanent Secretaries who were on the visit, not just Mark Sedwill. The visit was designed to progress a range of UK priorities in China, across security, economic and global issues.’
‘We don’t want money to be wasted on opulence’