Wall-to-wall taxis for Irvine

Lord Chancellor Derry Irvine - the politician with a taste for expensive wallpaper - has presided over a department which spends £71,000 a year on taxis, it emerged today.

The spending on taxis, taken by ministers and officials during the course of their work, was criticised by the Opposition who claim that the cost is far too high at a time when the public has to rely on a crumbling Tube and rail system.

During the last financial year, Lord Irvine's department spent £71,000 on taxis, an increase of £18,000 on the previous year, according to a written answer to a question from Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury, John Bercow.

In the current year, from April 2001 to January 2002, £50,000 has already been spent on taxis, which excludes the amount spent outside the usual contract with cabbies. The Lord Chancellor's department is smaller than most of the other Government units, with only four ministers.

Mr Bercow has tabled a series of questions over the cost of ministerial taxis. Pointing out that the cost of taxis exceeded even the £59,000 of taxpayer's money that Lord Irvine spent on wallpaper, Mr Bercow said it was iniquitous.

"The Government cajoles more and more of us onto a crumbling public transport system while civil servants and Labour grandees spend freely on taxis." A spokeswoman for the Lord Chancellor's department defended the spending on taxis saying that, spread across the year, it amounted to less than £6,000 per month. She said that staff were only allowed to use taxis "if all other means of transport are deemed inappropriate".

But the Lord Chancellor's spending is dwarfed by the £378,000 that went on taxis for ministers and civil servants in the Foreign Office in just nine months, between April and December.

A Foreign Office spokesman said the increase on the last year, some 30 per cent, was due to round-theclock operations after the 11 September terrorist attacks.