While Whitehall tells the public to brace for the biggest cost of living squeeze in a generation, belt-tightening is altogether less popular among civil servants themselves. Figures unveiled this week show just 1,607 expense requests were rejected out of two years-worth of 2.9 million requests. Less than £20,000 was saved…

The figures, released earlier this week, were discovered via FoIs submitted by Emburse. Despite requesting the information from all 23 departments, just 14 replied within the legal window and two claimed to have no access to the data requested – a claim undermined by a dozen other departments having said access. Presumably the FoI teams at those departments that didn’t release figures were too busy filing expenses…

Four departments did not reject any claims in the past two years, despite over 470,000 claims being processed by them. Of those that did release figures in full, the Treasury – appropriately – rejected the most claims, at 12%. This contrasts with the MoD, which rejected just 0.2%. BEIS rejected one claim out of 18,053 submitted…

The SVP of Emburse correctly observes:

“Given the increased cost of living in the UK, it’s vital that the government leads by example. When we’re all expected to tighten our belts, I think the public has a right to know if taxpayers’ money is being squandered through outdated, inefficient processes, and a lack of oversight.”

Somehow, Guido struggles to muster the benefit of the doubt that all expense claims by the Civil Service are being done so entirely out of necessity…