Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, pursuant to the Answer of 14 July 2014, Official Report, columns 587-8W, on public expenditure, how many times and for what occasions senior civil servants had given express prior written permission for expenses to be claimed in the last year.

Personal expense claims are authorised in business areas across all the DWP operational and corporate units. This information could therefore only be provided at disproportionate cost to the Department.