PARLIAMENTARY WRITTEN QUESTION
Travel (11 December 2014)

To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, how much her Department has spent on (a) taxis, (b) first class train tickets and (c) business class air travel in each of the last five years.

Asked by:
Lucy Powell (Labour)

Data on how much my Department has spent on (a) taxis in each of the last five years is shown below. Data on how much my Department has spent on (b) first class train tickets and (c) business class air travel is shown for the last four years. Due to a change in travel provider, data on class of travel is not available for the period 2009/10.

Business and first class travel may be overstated due to credits (eg from cancellations) possibly not having the correct class of travel applied.

All journeys of up to five hours must be in economy/standard class. Journeys of over five hours must also be in economy/standard class unless a line manager explicitly agrees that premium economy or business class is needed. First class travel is not allowed.

Expenditure £m	2009/10	2010/11	2011/12	2012/13	2013/14
(a) Taxi fares	0.26	0.19	0.23	0.23	0.26
(b) First Class rail fares	not available	0.03	0.00	0.00	0.00
(c) Business Class air fares	not available	1.22	1.03	0.91	0.88

Answered by:
Sir Desmond Swayne (Conservative)
6 January 2015