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Whitehall hands taxpayers green bill for flights
Exclusive TAXPAYERS are paying nearly £1m a year to offset the impact of environmentally-damaging flights taken by Ministers and civil servants.
Hard-up Government departments, quangos and agencies spent 962,009 offsetting the carbon emissions from their flights in just one year.
The money is calculated according to the miles flown and goes towards renewable energy projects. Ministers say it is right to counteract the damage caused by the polluting flights.
But with Whitehall spending under fresh scrutiny as the economic crisis bites, the cost has led to questions over the use of taxpayers' cash and whether departments could make better use of technology to cut down on the need for so many flights.
The most recent set of official statistics reveals that the Ministry of Defence had the biggest offset bill in 2006-07 – the most recent figures available – spending 180,599.
The Department for International Development (DfID) was close behind with 175,741.
But even departments with less apparent cause for flying have made large payments. HM Revenue and Customs paid 72,124, the Home Office spent 38,993 and the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) 37,845.
Shipley MP Philip Davies, who obtained information on the amount being spent by asking Parliamentary questions, said: "Every Government department has got to make spending priorities, and surely DfID's should be to alleviate poverty in the Third World. Just think what they could do with that amount of money, rather than using it to offset.
"What must soldiers in Iraq with-out the proper equipment think of when they see them spending 180,000 on carbon offsetting?
"I think it's one of those industries that's developed out of all this fanaticism over climate change yet I don't think there's proper, clear robust policies in place to make sure the money's spent in the way it's envisaged.
"I see these carbon offsetting schemes as being a bit of a con and a complete waste of taxpayers' money."
A fellow Conservative, Scarborough and Whitby MP Robert Goodwill, said Ministers and officials could cut down on travel by rethinking how they work.
"It's not clear in every case the offsetting schemes do deliver the long-term environmental enhancements that are claimed for some of them," he said.
"Ministers should, wherever possible, look at alternative ways of carrying out their work and certainly use of technology such as video conferencing would be a good opportunity to do that."
A full breakdown of figures for 2007-08 should be made available next year, but some of the departments that have made their bill public expect their costs to rise. The DWP expects its to increase by 6,000 to 43,000.
The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs itself, which administers the scheme, spent 60,000 offsetting carbon emissions from short- and long-haul flights in 2006-07.
The Government Carbon Offsetting Fund, managed by EEA Fund Management Ltd, was set up to cover Ministerial and official travel from April 2006.
Projects supported by it include a scheme to generate electricity from wastewater in the Philippines and from farm waste water in Thailand, and a hydropower plant in China.
The fund is available for all central government departments to use and claims to be a "simple and cost-effective" way of offsetting emissions, but some choose to offset through other schemes.
The Foreign and Commonwealth Office has spent more than 200,000 in carbon credits on travel by UK-based staff in a different scheme managed by the Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Partnership.
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