Labour condemns ‘culture of lavish spending’ under Rishi Sunak as party report reveals govt debit card purchases
Rishi Sunak has been accused of failing to rein in a “culture of lavish spending” across government departments as Labour published details of thousands of purchases over the past two years on taxpayer-funded debit cards.
The opposition party’s report on Government Procurement Cards (GPCs) showed 14 departments spent at least £145.5m in 2021 compared with the £84.9m spent a decade before, an increase of 71.38% in 10 years.
It follows the rules around GPCs being relaxed at the start of the COVID pandemic, with card holders able to spend up to £20,000 per transaction and £100,000 a month across all spending categories.
Labour said the increase in spending was driven by the Ministry of Justice, which went from spending £36.9m a year in 2011 to £84.9m in 2021.
The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office’s spending was 3.7 times higher in 2021 – at £34.4m – than the Foreign Office and Department for International Development’s combined spending of £9.3m a decade prior, according to the report.
Nine of the 14 departments analysed spent more in the last month of the financial year than any other month of the year, with overall GPC spending more than two-thirds higher in March 2021 than the monthly average for the rest of the year.
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Labour also found there were 34,661 transactions of over £1,000 in 2021 across the 14 departments.
The party named the largest suppliers to departments through GPCs in 2021 too – they included: Banner Stationery (£3.3m); Amazon (£1.51m); Enterprise-Rent-a-Car (£414,785); IKEA (£237,683); Posturite Chairs (£131,652); John Lewis (£105,832); KPMG (£105,014); and Apple (£101,467).
It said the biggest was BFS Group, which provides food supplies to the Prison Service, with sales over £500 worth an overall £54.9m.
Labour plan to ‘get tough on waste’
Labour said it was concerned about “lax controls” over GPCs and “unchecked spending sprees engaged in by multiple departments across Whitehall at the end of each financial year”.
It claimed there was “excessive spending” on “extravagant events, expensive restaurants, high-end catering, five-star hotels, lavish gifts and hospitality, luxury furnishings and fabrics, unnecessary corporate branding, non-essential training, high-priced awayday venues, and the purchase of alcohol at taxpayers’ expense”.
Deputy leader Angela Rayner said the spending was not appropriate during a cost of living crisis.
She told Sky News: “We’ve seen scandal and we’ve seen sleaze, we’ve seen billions of pounds wasted under the Conservative government that we have now, and no action to clear up this mess.
“[These] cards are a way of bypassing the normal auditing process. And we see when it comes to the end of the financial year, big jumps in the spend and we’ve seen expenditure which is just not justifiable during the cost of living crisis.
“So there has to be transparency and there has to be regulation of the use of these cards.”
Ms Rayner said her party would create an “Office of Value for Money” to “get tough on waste”.
“Britain may be facing the worst cost of living crisis for decades, but whether as chancellor or prime minister, Rishi Sunak has failed to rein in the culture of lavish spending across Whitehall on his watch,” she said.
“Today’s shocking revelations lift the lid on a scandalous catalogue of waste, with taxpayers’ money frittered away across every part of government, while in the rest of the country, families are sick with worry about whether their pay cheque will cover their next weekly shop or the next tranche of bills.”
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Tories hit back at Labour report
Transport minister Richard Holden defended the use of the cards, telling Sky News: “If everything had to be invoiced, you know, you can’t actually do stuff that you need to do and it can be more expensive and add more bureaucracy.
“I don’t think what we should do is introduce more bureaucracy, a sort of Jim Hacker style department of Administrative Affairs to administrate the other administrators, which seems to be Labour’s proposal.”
However, he agreed about the need for transparency over the spending, pointing to the monthly report on what is spent on the cards.
“Sunlight is a great disinfectant for this sort of stuff,” added Mr Holden. “And so I think that’s why it’s so important that we’re as transparent as possible with what the government spends.”
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A senior Conservative source hit back harder at the Labour report, saying: “Awkwardly for Labour HQ they’ve forgotten that they introduced these ‘civil servant credit cards’ in 1997.
“By 2010 Labour was spending almost £1bn of taxpayers’ money on everything from dinners at Mr Chu’s Chinese restaurant to luxury five-star hotels.
“The Conservatives swiftly stopped their absurd profligacy, cutting the number of cards, introducing a requirement for spending to be publicly declared and introducing controls.
“Typically, Labour’s ‘big idea’ is to spend millions to establish yet another quango, stuff it with thousands of bureaucrats and give them gold plated pensions.”
Nigel Farage has said he would scrap the UK’s human rights law to enable the mass deportation of illegal migrants, as the government reportedly prepares to send more than 100 small boat arrivals back to France.
Writing in The Daily Telegraph ahead of a speech later today, the Reform leader said the Human Rights Act would be ripped up should he become prime minister.
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He would also take the country out of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and other international treaties, describing them as “malign influences” which had been “allowed to frustrate deportations”.
Pulling Britain out of the ECHR would make it one of only three European countries not signed up – the others being Russia and Belarus.
The UK’s Human Rights Act, Reform say, would be replaced by a British Bill of Rights. This would only apply to British citizens and those with a legal right to live in the UK.
Small boat arrivals would have no right to claim asylum. They would be housed at old military bases before being deported to their country of origin, or third countries like Rwanda.
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Will Starmer’s migration tough talk deliver?
One in, one out
Sir Keir Starmer, meanwhile, is said to be ready to implement one of his major policies to tackle the small boats crisis within weeks.
According to The Times, the one in, one out migrant deal he signed with France’s Emmanuel Macron earlier this summer will soon see more than 100 people sent back.
The newspaper reported there are dozens of migrants currently in detention, including some arrested over the bank holiday weekend, who could be among the first sent back to France.
In exchange, the UK would be expected to take an equal number of asylum seekers in France with ties to Britain.
Read more: How will the one in, one out deal work?
Sir Keir Starmer hopes his deal with Emmanuel Macron will help. Pic: Reuters
A record 28,288 people have crossed the Channel in small boats this year. The total is 46% higher than at the same stage last year.
More boats were seen crossing on Monday, though the figures won’t be published by the Home Office until later.
Sir Keir is under mounting pressure within his own party to grip the issue, with Sir Tony Blair’s former home secretary Lord Blunkett warning the public “will turn on” him.
But they may already have – a YouGov poll over the weekend found 71% of people think the prime minister is dealing with the small boats crisis badly.
Protests have taken place outside hotels used to house asylum seekers over the weekend, and the government is braced for more legal challenges from councils over their use.
Labour have taken a battering in the opinion polls throughout 2025, with Reform consistently in the lead.
Three people have died following a helicopter crash during a flying lesson on the Isle of Wight.
A fourth person is in hospital in a serious condition following the incident, according to Hampshire Police.
Officers were called to the scene of a “helicopter that had come down” off Shanklin Road near Ventnor at 9.24am on Monday, the force said.
A spokesman for the aircraft’s owner Northumbria Helicopters said G-OCLV – which is listed as a Robinson R44 II helicopter – was involved in the accident during a flying lesson.
Fire and rescue vehicles at the scene near Ventnor. Pic: Stu Southwell
Aerial view of the crash site
Helicopter ‘spiralled out of sight’ – live updates
Four people, including the pilot, were on board the aircraft, which departed nearby Sandown Airport at 9am, the company also said in a statement.
A critical care team, including a doctor and specialist paramedic, was also sent to the crash site, Hants and Isle of Wight Air Ambulance added, alongside fire engines and other emergency vehicles.
The Air Accidents Investigation Branch confirmed it was alerted to the incident and is sending a team to investigate. A major incident was declared but has since been stood down.
A spokesperson for Hampshire and Isle of Wight Air Ambulance said in a statement: “We have treated and airlifted one patient to the Major Trauma Centre, University Hospital Southampton. Our thoughts are with them, and everyone involved in today’s incident.”
Darren Toogood, editor and publisher at the Island Echo, told Sky News presenter Kamali Melbourne the helicopter crashed on a “significantly busy, high-speed road” between the village of Godshill and the seaside town of Shanklin.
“It was on one of the first flights of the day,” he said.
“It’s a bank holiday weekend in August on the Isle of Wight. It’s an incredibly busy area. Lots of tourists down at the moment. It appears no vehicles were involved, which is incredible, given how busy this road would have been this morning.”
A witness, Leigh Goldsmith, told the Isle of Wight County Press she saw the helicopter “spiralling” before crashing into a hedge as she drove along the road.
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Police have closed Shanklin Road, blocking it off with several emergency vehicles, and are warning people to avoid the area.
Northumbria Helicopters said it is “giving its full cooperation to the authorities investigating this incident”.
UK
Ten organisations write urgent letter to home secretary over violence against women and girls strategy
Ten child protection organisations have written an urgent letter to the home secretary expressing concern about the omission of child sexual abuse from the government’s violence against women and girls strategy, following a Sky News report.
Groups including the NSPCC, Barnardo’s and The Internet Watch Foundation wrote to Yvette Cooper to say that violence against women and girls (VAWG) and child sexual abuse are “inherently and deeply connected”, suggesting any “serious strategy” to address VAWG needs to focus on child sexual abuse and exploitation.
The letter comes after Sky News revealed an internal Home Office document, titled Our draft definition of VAWG, which said that child sexual abuse and exploitation is not “explicitly within the scope” of their strategy, due to be published in September.
Poppy Eyre when she was four years old
Responding to Sky News’ original report, Poppy Eyre, who was sexually abused and raped by her grandfather when she was four, said: “VAWG is – violence against women and girls. If you take child sexual abuse out of it, where are the girls?”
The Centre of Expertise on Child Sexual Abuse, which is funded by the Home Office and a signatory to the letter, estimates 500,000 children in England and Wales are sexually abused every year.
The NSPCC “welcome” the government’s pledge to halve VAWG in a decade, but is “worried that if they are going to fulfil this commitment, the strategy absolutely has to include clear deliverable objectives to combat child sexual abuse and exploitation too”, the head of policy, Anna Edmundson, told Sky News.
Poppy is a survivor of child sexual abuse
She warned the government “will miss a golden opportunity” and the needs of thousands of girls will be “overlooked” if child sexual abuse and exploitation is not “at the heart of its flagship strategy”.
The government insists the VAWG programme will include action to tackle child sexual abuse, but says it also wants to create a distinctive plan to “ensure those crimes get the specialist response they demand”.
“My message to the government is that if you’re going to make child sexual abuse a separate thing, we need it now,” Poppy told Sky News.
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Rape Crisis, which is one of the largest organisations providing support to women in England and Wales, shares these concerns.
It wants plans to tackle child sexual abuse to be part of the strategy, and not to sit outside it.
The internal Home Office document detailing its violence against women and girls strategy
“If a violence against women and girls strategy doesn’t include sexual violence towards girls, then it runs the risk of being a strategy for addressing some violence towards some females, but not all,” chief executive Ciara Bergman said.
A Home Office spokesperson said the government is “working tirelessly to tackle the appalling crimes of violence against women and girls and child sexual exploitation and abuse, as part of our Safer Streets mission”.
“We are already investing in new programmes and introducing landmark laws to overhaul the policing and criminal justice response to these crimes, as well as acting on the recommendations of Baroness Casey’s review into group-based Child Sexual Exploitation, and the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse,” they added.
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