Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how much his Department has spent on (a) Uber for Business and (b) other Uber transactions since 28 October 2016.

The Department can confirm following a detailed search of its Business Management Services database, that “Uber for Business” and “Uber” are not a registered supplier and consequently hold no records of any contracts held with this company.

Departmental staff travelling on official business may claim reimbursement for taxi journeys. Whilst we can identify the cost of these journeys the name of the provider is not recorded and so we would be unable to supply an expenditure figure specifically for Uber. All staff expense claims must be approved by an appropriate (more senior) approver and staff are required to submit receipts to justify their expenditure which would, in most cases, identify the supplier. However, it would incur a disproportionate cost to obtain this information through the examination of these receipts.