While ministers battle backbenchers over a £6 billion black hole in SEND funding, at least the pen-pushers at the Department for Education aren’t being asked to rough it. New figures show that in the year 2024-25, education civil servants clocked up 8,367 hotel nights – roughly one overnight stay for every member of staff. To do what…
The department’s own guidance caps hotel stays at £160 a night in London and £110 elsewhere. A bit of back-of-a-fag-packet maths suggests that could add up to as much as £920,370. Perhaps the mandarins should be given a lesson in frugality…
Starmer was read out a list of his 13 U-turns on BBC Radio 2, to which he responded:
“Well, I am a common sense merchant.”