Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how much her Department spent on taxi cabs for (a) ministers and (b) civil servants in each of the last three years.

Determining the amount spent on taxi cabs in the last three years is not readily available from our management systems. This is because the cost information is not held in an easily identifiable format.

Firstly, the Home Office does not have separate codes or fields for Ministers’ and Officials’ travel in our management systems. To identify ministers costs separately would require a manual review of all relevant records held by our travel provider over a three year time period.

Secondly, many taxi journeys are also reimbursed via a manual expenses process. The information required to identify civil servant taxi claims is not easily distinguishable within the central financial system and a manual review of all these records would also be required.