The extravagant ways of Mr. Lammy - part three 03/03/05

Labour's David Lammy, MP, continues his extravagant ways:  The cost of early retirement in his department has exploded from £208,000 in 1999-2000 to £1,500,000 in 2004-2005.  He won't provide the figures showing how much stationary costs have increased.  He is unable even to say how much is spent on cleaning and catering.  These figures were revealed to the House of Commons on 21 Feb., while earlier releases showed a jump in expenditure on consultants and office costs.

His Conservative challenger, William MacDougall, explained:

"Is working for Mr. Lammy too much for his staff?  Why have early retirement costs jumped from only £200 thousand a few years ago to £1.5 million now? Meanwhile his expenditure on consultants has increased to £9 million, nine times the level of the last Conservative Government.  That's a lot of early retirement, that's a lot of consultants..."

MacDougall added:

"And the cost of housing all these consultants and the remaining bureaucrats has also exploded, from only 234,000 in a few years ago to over a million pounds now.  Labour waste means taxes and spending go up, with no improvement in services."

Figures on Lammy's spending on consultants at the Department for Constitutional Affairs were released to the Commons on 7 Feb. and on office costs on 15 November 2004.

ENDS.