Angela Rayner defends own expenses after criticism of government’s ‘lavish spending’ culture – UK politics live

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Transport minister Richard Holden said a Labour investigation into government procurement cards (GPCs) had “wasted” civil servant time as the information was “already publicly available”.

It comes after Labour compiled a dossier on the use of the cards – with the party using parliamentary questions to secure some of the data – showing that across 2021 for 14 major Whitehall departments, a total of at least ?145.5m was spent using GPCs.

Speaking on ITV’s Good Morning Britain, Holden said:

In the big picture, what we’ve seen since 2010, is an 85% reduction in this. All of this data is publicly available online, it has been since 2012 – something which didn’t happen under the last Labour government.

We publish it on a monthly basis. The Labour party has spent half-a-million pounds asking parliamentary questions, 2,500 of them, wasting my civil servants time for information that is already publicly available and that they hid when they were last in office.

Holden also told Times Radio:

I don’t think any government minister would have been involved in that decision.

I could be wrong but that’s not my [understanding]. What wouldn’t normally happen is a spending of around ?3,000 going over a minister’s desk because, if you did, that’s all ministers would do on a daily basis.

Good morning. Labour’s deputy leader Angela Rayner has denied that her decision to expense hundreds of pounds on Apple electronics is the same as Whitehall’s use of government procurement cards on luxury items.

Labour claimed that a “lavish spending” culture in the civil service has seen taxpayer’s money wasted on fine art and fine dining.

Civil servants at 14 of the 15 main government departments spent nearly ?150m on government procurement cards in 2021, the figures show, a steep rise since 2010-11, when David Cameron warned about the lax rules and oversight governing their use.

Rayner said yesterday:

Today’s shocking revelations lift the lid on a scandalous catalogue of waste, with taxpayers’ money frittered away across every part of government, while in the rest of the country, families are sick with worry about whether their pay cheque will cover their next weekly shop or the next tranche of bills.

However, she was asked on Times Radio this morning about her own spending habits, including using ?249 of taxpayer’s money on AirPods.

“I’m actually using the equipment right now as I’m speaking to you on the iPad”, the deputy Labour leader said. “This is what I’m using to do my job – in fact I think it’s three years old now – to do my work as an MP and it’s totally transparent.”

She added:

I don’t think the ?1,600 on that is the same as millions of pounds that is being used on these credit cards in an inappropriate way. You know, we need to make sure there’s transparency and that the public are getting value for money.

I can absolutely justify my use of using electronic equipment to do my job, especially when I’m not – during the pandemic – when I wasn’t in the office in Westminster. And as I say, now I’m speaking to you on that very iPad that was purchased.

The Commons is still in recess. I’m Tom Ambrose and will be covering the UK politics live blog today and for the rest of this week while my colleague Andrew Sparrow is away.