Education officials spent £10m on first-class fares
By Nigel Morris and Richard Garner
Monday, 16 November 2009
Education officials have run up a £10m bill for the taxpayer from first-class rail travel over the last three years. Civil servants bought an estimated 60,000 first-class tickets between 2006 and 2009. The scale of the spending – equivalent to just over 300 teachers’ salaries or four new primary schools – provoked anger among opposition MPs and parents’ leaders.The bill was accumulated by the Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF), headed by Ed Balls, and by its predecessor, the Department for Education and Skills Parliamentary answers disclose that it spent £3.8m on first-class tickets in 2006-07, followed by £3.1m in 2007-08 and £3.2m in 2008-09.Diana Johnson, a schools minister, said that senior staff were entitled to travel first-class and were advised “if they need to work on the train then there may be occasions when first class travel will be less busy and noisy than standard class”. But David Laws, the Liberal Democrat education spokesman, said: “Ed Balls has warned he will slash the schools budget and lay off headteachers to do so, yet he is wasting millions on allowing his department’s bureaucrats to travel first-class. “This money should be making a real difference in our schools. Ed Balls needs to get a grip on his department.” Margaret Morrissey of the parents’ pressure group Parents Outloud said: “I know there are reasons why civil servants would have to travel – but why would they need to go first-class? It’s absolutely ridiculous.”If they spend so much time on the train, that may be the reason why they take so much time to answer a query. It can take two months to get an acknowledgement for a letter and another two months for a reply.” One of the reasons for the high cost is said to be because its offices are spread around the country with staff in Darlington, Runcorn and Sheffield often being called to London for meetings. John Dunford, the general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, which represents secondary headteachers, said: “Surely they could do a lot more of their business by telephone conferencing?” A DCSF spokesman said the department saved cash, and created jobs, by having several locations outside London. “This multi-site operation does present some logistical challenges, meaning staff occasionally have to travel down to London and back from the regional offices.”However, every effort is made to ensure that meetings can be done via video phone where possible to save time and money. Most journeys are in standard class.”
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Many thanks for exposing this iniquitous state of affairs.
If, as they say, this £9million was ONLY for what was spent on 1st. class tickets, and yet the MAJORITY of tickets bought were standard class, what on earth was the TOTAL spent? It also raises the question; Do they also claim for 1st class service food and drinks during these journeys. Many years back, when the Railways were a national asset (?), I seem to remember that all Government Officials were given rail passes for such journeys, which, seeing as how the trains were running anyway, virtualy cost the tax payers nothing. Now we have to pay the exhorbitant charges of the franchisees. The loss of this huge amount, that could have been spent on improving our children’s education, can only be described as tragic!
I serve on an advisory housing forum where we hold regular meetings with other distant groups. My daughter who is the Marketing Director of a multi billion turnover company, does likewise. We both use recorded video-links to hold regular meetings, where we can clearly hear each other and see each other on a video screen, saving millions it would cost in lost time and on train fares to London, or similar venu. Being recorded also affords us the opertunity to review who said what at any future date.
It is disgusting the way this Government and local authorities spend our tax money with gay abandon, on luxuries that are entirely unjustified.
It is time they and their cronies were made to realise that they are PUBLIC SERVANTS, paid by us. NOT LORDS OF THE MANOR; with us to foot-the-bill for their extravagant life styles!
If, as the DCSF Spokesman claims, most of the conferencing is done by videophone, why this huge cost of travel? All of it should be done this way, with say just one annual meeting to retain personal contacts.
And lastly, who is this un-named Spokesman. I am heartily sick and tired of these PUBLIC SERVANTS, and others, who hide behind this subterfuge, where we are never given a name. This prevents us, their “Paymasters”, from knowing who these persons are and therefore who to contact if we have relevant comments or suggestions to make. I am aware that the Media do not alway wish to divulge their sources of information, but there should be no secrecy, or protection in cases like this! It just gives them the opportunity to claim it wasn’t them, or that they were misquoted. A statement of time, date and place would also establish the authenticity.
Again thankyou for keeping us informed.
Quo Vadis England!
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