Labour got much of the lobby exercised last week with its latest wheeze: mysteriously rebranding its Twitter account as ‘the GPC files’ and sending out a link to ‘theGPCfiles’ to launch 7 a.m Monday morning. Sadly, for fans of the Global Powerlifting Committee eagerly expecting a string of revelations, the website in question focuses on government procurement cards. These allow purchases to be made directly against departmental budgets without going through regular invoicing procedures.
Dozens of parliamentary questions and Freedom of Information requests have been tabled by Labour in recent months to try to find out what this money has been spent on. The website itself looks like an attempt to copy Sky and Tortoise’s recent ‘Westminster Files’ project by increasing the transparency around information which Whitehall makes it difficult to obtain. And while the ‘GPC files’ don’t have the same punch as the expenses scandal, Mr S has nevertheless had an enjoyable morning trawling through the details online.
Below are six of the more embarrassing revelations from Labour’s new project…
Post-pandemic splurge
Spending controls were relaxed during the pandemic, with holders of GPCs now able to spend £20,000 a transaction and £100,000 a month. Total spending is now up by 71 per cent on 2010, with 14 departments spending a total of at least £145.5 million throughout 2021 compared to £84.9 million in 2010/11. Worst offenders? The Ministry of Justice, up from £36.9 million to £84.9 million, and the Foreign Office, whose spending was nearly four times higher than ten years previously.
Truss and Sunak’s ministries in the firing line
The pair of Prime Ministers were both serving in departmental briefs during the period covered by the files. Sunak was at the Treasury from February 2020 until July 2022; Truss was at the Foreign Office from September 2021 until September 2022. Under Sunak, the Treasury spent £3,393 on 13 fine art photographs from the Tate Gallery and, more damningly, they still haven’t published a single month of GPC data for the calendar year of 2022. So much for the disinfectant of sunlight.
While Liz Truss was Foreign Secretary meanwhile, government cards were used to pay £3,240 for access to a Heathrow VIP lounge, £1,443 on lunch and dinner in Jakarta and £7,218 on a reception at a Sydney amusement park. The Foreign Office spent £344,803 on restaurants and bars in 2021 as well as £23,457 on duty-free wine and spirits, rising to £95,834 in the first ten months of 2022.
Branded merchandise
Thousands are still being spent on questionable branded items. Among these include the Prison Service spending £9,236 on branded hand sanitiser, Natural England spending £1,411 on branded mugs ‘in recognition for the difficult year of 2020’ and the Ministry of Justice paying £4,019 for branded USB cables for a virtual conference. Top of the pile though is £1,552 spent on ‘purple cups’ for UK Visas and Immigration and the Passport Service. How are all those small boats going?
Misleading descriptions of spending
Labour have pointed out that records of spending are often poorly-detailed with misleading descriptions. Examples include English sparkling wine classed as ‘computer equipment’, £3,266 of luxury lighting as ‘computer software’ and £3,158 from a five-star hotel in Bahrain described as ‘accounting, auditing and bookkeeping services.’
Shoddy record keeping
At least four departments have had to be prompted by Labour’s parliamentary questions to correct major errors or omissions in their GPC data, which had otherwise gone unnoticed. These include the Business Department publishing the wrong data for April 2020, the Home Office and Health ministries failing to publish records and the Cabinet Office missing data. This is despite the National Audit Office warning about the need for ‘timely and accurate management information,’ without which they said departments could not maintain effective controls on GPC use.
The Opposition is doing its job
Perhaps the worst takeaway of all from the ‘GPC files’ is that it shows the Opposition doing precisely what it ought to be doing: exposing waste, causing mischief and generally putting the government on the back foot. The figures primarily come from the 248 written questions which Emily Thornberry has tabled since May. Her longtime media advisor is none other than Damian McBride, a past master in the intricacies of Whitehall and Westminster.
Labour’s sophisticated research and briefing operation today shows just how far the party has come from the shambles of the Corbyn years. CCHQ have launched a decent fightback – pointing out that it was Labour who brought in GPCs in 1997 – but they will have a tough fight on their hands come the next election.
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