Sadiq Khan is splashing out on a TfL fare freeze to buy voters’ favour – it looks like even that can’t convince civil servants to stop using their favourite form of transport: the humble taxi. A Freedom of Information request has revealed that the FCDO, in the last three years alone, has spaffed £5,495,000 of taxpayer cash on taxis. The £2.4 million spent by the department last year is a whopping 208% increase on 2021’s bill. Of that, £232,611 has been spent carting ministers around. It is a long trek from King Charles Street to the Red Lion…
Meanwhile PCS, the civil service union, has announced it will again ballot for strike action imminently, including in their demands “a significant shortening of the working week with no loss of pay.” Can their working week get much shorter?
In a week where civil servants joined the latest wave of strike action, Guido can reveal that just two Whitehall departments, Transport and Education, spent a combined £300,000 on taxis in 2022 alone. The figures, acquired through two FoI requests, add to prior calculations that found Whitehall wonks had spaffed £10,000,000 on taxis over three years. In good news for civil service efficiency, it only took them four times longer than the required 20 working days to respond…
The Department for Education were the worse offenders of the two. Despite having half the headcount of Transport, they spent five times as much on taxis – with a grand total of £258,668 in 2022-23. Transport spent £47,795.
The FoI requests also contained data on other expenses over 2021 and 2022: DfT spent £20,500 on eye care expenses and £650 on formal dress hire whilst Education spent £950 on honours ceremonies and garden parties. Total expenses for both departments over two years add to over £6,200,000. With such generous expenses, working arrangements, pay and pensions, it’s almost like civil service strike action is politically motivated…
As over 100,000 civil servants have announced their plans to join the picket lines – no doubt they’ll relish the rare opportunity to leave their home offices – Guido can shed yet more light on their notoriously cushty conditions. From the last three years, civil servants in the Department for Work and Pensions alone spent over £2,000,000 on taxis. The enormous drop in expenses after the pandemic, when Whitehall’s remote working obsession began, will surprise nobody.
The DWP currently has just 18% office occupancy, according to the government’s tracker, and still spent £431,000 in the past year alone. For over £1,000 a day, not even one in five can turn up for work.
The figure was attained by an Freedom of Information request and comes on top of those ascertained by Labour written questions in October. Labour found the sum total of Whitehall taxi waste, including the Government Car Service, was a stonking £8,200,000 – though this didn’t include the figure for the DWP (nor the MoD and Home Office). With these numbers on top, government taxi spend over the past 3 years is now well into the eight-figures.
In this context, co-conspirators should spare a thought for our striking civil servants. Assuming they haven’t forgotten where their offices are, how will they get to the picket lines without their taxpayer-funded free rides?
You spend your entire adult life defending unionised workers and what do you get to show for it? Last night poor old Owen Jones was nearly knocked off his bike by a dangerous black cab driver, who then wound down the window and told him: “I f***ing love it when you cyclists die”.
By contrast last night Guido took an Uber home in peace, no grief from any self-entitled unionised loudmouth…
Militant cabbies who vowed to blockade Trafalgar Square have boasted how their threats forced Sadiq Khan to give them everything they wanted. Last week the London mayor conceded almost every single one of the cabbies’ demands, as well as imposing punitive regulations on Uber. What might explain the timing? Well, the militant United Cabbies Group were threatening to bring London to a standstill this week unless Khan caved in. It would have looked pretty bad for the Mayor given he’s off making friends in America at the moment. The capitulation came and now United Cabbies Group have cancelled the blockade as “the Mayor brought forward his announcement because of the pressure of a demo”. London could have a Mayor who stands up to union intimidation, instead he gave in to blackmail so his photo op in the States wasn’t ruined…
Sadiq Khan has caved in to the taxi unions and awarded black cab drivers a staggering £65 million taxpayer subsidy, 100 new taxi ranks across London and the installation of 90 highly expensive rapid chargers, which electric private hire vehicles will not be allowed to use. At the same time the Mayor is forcing new red tape on private hire drivers, including “advanced driving” and written English tests which black cab drivers will not have to take. So how did the taxi unions end up getting everything they wanted?
Khan’s “action plan” contains 27 measures, almost identical to the 28 measures in the Licensed Taxi Drivers Association manifesto. The day before the plan was published the Deputy Mayor for Transport took part in a photo op with the head of the LTDA. Sadiq himself met the head of the LTDA on his hundreth day in office. By contrast Uber has not been consulted on any of the new measures – indeed the Deputy Mayor for Transport has ignored two invitations to meet Uber drivers. It’s notable that the LTDA are the only people outside City Hall and TfL in today’s press release – it’s clear that they have been heavily involved in drawing this up while private hire firms have been shunned. Sadiq promised he would be a Mayor who doesn’t give in to vested interests. Instead he’s capitulated to the taxi unions. Rather than level the playing field by reducing regulations on cabbies, he’s slapped red tape on the innovators who make travelling across the capital so much cheaper and easier for passengers…
