How civil servants blow our money

The huge sums spent on luxuries for civil servants are laid bare today.

Ministers are racking up multi-million-pound bills on treats for their mandarins. The list includes first-class travel, satellite television, gyms and glossy magazines.

Ministers are also spending tens of millions every year sprucing up their offices. The scale of the spending has triggered an outcry among MPs, who believe many of the expenses are unnecessary. Tory MP George Osborne has tabled more than 250 written parliamentary questions about Whitehall spending.

Yesterday, the Evening Standard told how Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott ran up a bill of almost £50,000 on plants for his offices. Now the huge bill for other marginal goods and services can be revealed.

The Northern Ireland Office spent more than £78,000 on newspapers and magazine subscriptions including, bizarrely, House and Garden, Homes and Exteriors and Country Homes. The Department of Constitutional

Affairs takes periodicals including Bookseller and Caterer and Hotelkeeper, running up an annual bill of more than £63,000.

Several departments have satellite TV subscriptions, with the Department of Culture, Media and Sport splashing out more than £31,000 a year for channels showing top sporting fixtures. The Cabinet Office has six pay-TV subscriptions, costing £6,104 a year.

Mr Osborne said: "Whitehall seems to have a very cavalier attitude to spending other people's money. The old adage that if you look after the pennies, the pounds will look after themselves is true. The waste on little things like magazines and periodicals gives an insight into the scale of waste." More than £7 million was spent on firstclass travel last year by the Department for Work and Pensions.

Civil servants from the Department of Health say most of their £5.4 million bill went on journeys between London and their offices in Leeds. Ministers insist no rules have been broken.

By far the biggest expenses are for office refurbishments. The Cabinet Office has spent more than £104million doing up its buildings since Labour came to power in 1997, while the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has splashed out more than £62million over just four years.

Many departments spend millions buying - or simply hiring - new furniture. Over the last three years, the Department of Health's bill for office furniture has totalled almost £5 million.

Despite the vast sums already spent, many departments are planning even more lavish programmes this year and next. The Foreign Office, which has spent £86million on refurbishments since 1997, is planning to spend another £5.7 million this year, and £9.1 million next year.

A spokeswoman for the Cabinet Office, which is responsible for Civil Service affairs, could not explain why so many government offices needed doing up every year. She said: "It is up to individual departments to make those sorts of decisions." Other Yes, Minister-style luxuries revealed include staff gyms - with Mr Prescott's office spending £82,000 moving a fitness suite from one office to another - and snack machines, which cost about £1,000 a year per unit to hire.