Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:

To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, how much his Department has spent on (a) taxis, (b) first class train tickets and (c) business class air travel in each of the last four years.

The table below sets out the expenditure for my Department on taxis, first class train tickets and business class air travel.

The information for taxis is as shown on the Department's Finance System and for train and air as recorded on the Redfern Travel Management Information Reports.

My Department started to use its current travel provider, Redfern, in July 2009 and, “although the format of the travel report for 2009–10 is for the partial year July 2009–March 2010 due to the previous travel contract being discontinued, this has been included for reference”. As can be seen, if the partial year of 2009–10 is compared to the full year of 2016–17, taxi fare expenditure has fallen by 51 per cent, first class train ticket expenditure has fallen by 97 per cent, and business class air travel has fallen by 82 per cent since the start of the decade, an overall fall of around 87 per cent or £230,000.