Met officers spend £7m on in-house credit cards

Scotland Yard officers spent almost £7 million on their staff American Express cards in the last financial year, new figures reveal.

The latest disclosure for 2006/07, revealed under Freedom of Information rules, comes amid the Met's corruption probe over irregular spending on the Amex cards.

There were immediate calls for the Met to curb spending on the "in-house credit cards". New documents show annual bills, which are picked up by the taxpayer, ballooned from £811,056 to nearly £7 million in four years. More and more staff have the cards, with each cardholder now spending an average of £2,300 a year.

Two officers and one former officer have been arrested by Scotland Yard in relation to irregular Amex payments, while 800 cards were recently cancelled as part of the inquiry.

Andy Hayman, the chief anti-terrorism officer, resigned while maintaining his innocence over a separate investigation into his £15,000 entertainment expenses. Officers and staff are given Amex cards to pay for travel and accommodation, with an emphasis on costs incurred abroad.

A breakdown of the figures, obtained by Channel 4 News, shows 336 officers and staff spent £811,056 on the cards in 2003/04. That jumped to £2,436,300 for 921 staff in 2004/05, and to £4,953,622 for 2,607 employees in 2005/06. By the end of the last financial year, £6,912,672 had been spent by 3,004 officers and staff.

Chris Huhne, the Liberal Democrats' home affairs spokesman, said: "Spending on plastic cards can be seductive even for hard-headed policemen. The Met clearly need to get a grip on this and ensure proper budget and expenses control with taxpayers' money."

The Metropolitan Police Authority is also carrying out an audit of how the cards are used. Tony Arbour, of the MPA, said: "It seems these payments have not been scrutinised as they should have been." He added: "Payments seem to have ballooned extraordinarily."

Documents from the MPA show that £4.7 million spent on the Amex cards is still unaccounted for. A detective constable, detective sergeant and former detective sergeant have all been arrested. Public spending watchdog the Audit Commission has vowed to keep a close eye on the MPA audit, before deciding whether to carry out its own independent investigation.

The Met's current investigation into Amex spending follows a similar probe in 2004/05, into what the MPA described as "a number of questionable returns".

One detective was revealed to have used his card to pay for his wife's plastic surgery.

A spokesman for the Met said: "The numbers of cards increased significantly between 2003/04 and 2006/07 as the pilot, which originally only involved officers from special branch, diplomatic and royalty protection, was extended firstly to other officers within specialist operations, then to the serious crime directorate and finally across the MPS as a whole."

An MPA spokesman said internal control of the Amex payments had been "unacceptable" and new "watertight systems" were needed.