Taxpayers might wonder what exactly they’re paying for when HMRC tries to shut down its phone line and designs even more diversity training courses. The situation has got so bad that 89% of business owners now say poor levels of service from the taxman are negatively impacting their ability to work…

Apart from buying half a million pounds’ worth of new furniture, Guido can reveal that the UK’s tax overlords have been racking up an eye-watering bill on planes and taxis since the election. In July and August alone HMRC spent £490,700 on plane travel. It says “the most cost-effective means of travel is always considered prior to bookings of this nature.” That’s reassuring…

At the same time the taxpayer is coughing up about £6,000 a week on private taxis for the taxman to use, running up a £65,703 tab since July. Public transport is for thee, not for me…

The Foreign Office is blazing into the new government with a whopping price tag on taxi use. An FoI request dispatched from Guido reveals the department alone has spent £140,000 on taxi rides since the election. Whitehall wonks are no strangers to spaffing the cash on private rides…

About two-thirds of FCDO staff turned up to the office according to the last occupancy statistics, before Labour stopped reporting them. Meanwhile PCS, the Civil Service union, continues its relentless push for a “a significant shortening of the working week with no loss of pay” while balloting members for strike action. Nice work if you can get it…

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?