Northern Ireland Office: Taxis

Question

Asked by

Lord Laird
To ask Her Majesty's Government further to the Written Answer by the Lord President (Baroness Royall of Blaisdon) on 30 March (WA 198-99) concerning the cost of providing information about taxi expenses for officials of the Northern Ireland Office, in developing its calculation, how long the Northern Ireland Office's Financial Services Division considered it took to examine one claim. [HL2767]

Baroness Royall of Blaisdon
Calculating expenditure on taxis reimbursed through the travel and subsistence system for the first two weeks of 2007-08 would involve a detailed manual review of every single travel and subsistence claim submitted for a period of up to four months given that staff are permitted to submit claims up to three months after the month in which the costs were incurred. Therefore taxi costs incurred in April could be claimed up until the end of July.

There were 4,814 claims during 2007-08 so the period to the end of July represents, on average, over 1,600 claims. It is estimated that the process of retrieving, reviewing, calculating the taxi cost and compiling the relevant information would take, on average, two to three minutes per claim. It is estimated that this process alone would exceed the disproportionate cost threshold of £750. In addition it would also be necessary, in order to review the information for accuracy and completeness, to carry a spot check of, say, 10 per cent of claims and there would be other costs involved in preparing the Answer to the Question.