New year, same old talking point: ministerial cars. For whatever reason, January 2014 was stuffed with stories about how our most senior politicians get around town. The image of The Right Honourable Whoever reclining into the plump leather seats of a chauffeur-driven ministerial car has lost none of its symbolic potency. Perhaps it’s even gained some during this time of austerity.
Top of the news-pile were the Government’s own figures on ministerial car usage. They don’t, it should be said, cover all of the journeys made by ministerial car in the last financial year: they just cover the “top-up” journeys made outside of the departments’ car polling service. But they still threw up some eye-catching factoids. For instance, according to the Daily Telegraph’s analysis, 396 of the 3,164 journeys were made purely to transport the red boxes containing the ministers’ documents, without any ministers present. Nick Clegg used this upmarket courier service a full 52 times, more than any of his colleagues.
Before we all anger at the thought of a box enjoying a better ride than most of us do, we should consider the official Government response. Apparently, there are times when a minister needs to be somewhere, but doesn’t want to carry a bundle of sensitive or top secret paperwork with them – and so they sometimes take public transport (which is what the Ministerial Code encourages them to do), while the paperwork is ferried, as safely as possible, to their home. That sounds sensible enough. We’ve already seen the hoo-haa that can develop when a minister leaves a bag on a train. Care ought to be taken with the running of the country.
Besides, while we’re showing politicians some understanding, it’s also worth noting that the Coalition has worked to cut the cost of ministerial car usage. There are now fewer cars allocated to individual ministers (13, instead of the 78 or so under Labour), and a greater reliance on car-pooling within departments. This means that the number of vehicles in the Government Car Service has dropped from 136 to 85. There don’t seem to be any figures for the last financial year, but this policy had already cut spending from £6.7 million in 2009-10 to £1.9m in 2011-12 – although that needs to be set against the spending on taxis that isn’t recorded in those figures.
The Government does appear to think that more can be done to cut costs – and emissions. Another of the January stories was that No.10 is eager to have more electric cars in the ministerial fleet, above and beyond the 20 hybrid Toyota Priuses that they already have. Green, clean and lean? Certainly. But it doesn’t come close to the demands of Home Office minister Norman Baker. He’d prefer to use a ministerial bicycle.
Of course, if you do need a ministerial car you know who to lease it from.
