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Quango shelling out: Electoral Commission head Jenny Watson employed federal government-issued credit score cards to pay for London Underground fares and taxis
The election watchdog’s workers utilized taxpayers’ dollars to buy fruit for their lunches, credit score for their cellular phones and a leaving card for a colleague, it was unveiled yesterday.The Electoral Commission employed federal government-issued credit score cards to pay for every little thing from milk to London Underground fares.Countless numbers of kilos have been billed to the cards for conference rooms just a handful of miles from the quango’s head workplace.Staff at the commission, which is charged with making sure thoroughly clean and efficient elections, racked up a total of £345,553.70 on the cards in the financial calendar year that ended in March.The period of time incorporated final year’s standard election, which saw the organisation and its head, Jenny Watson, receive large criticism about the late-night time queues that formulated exterior some polling stations, preventing a lot of voters from casting their ballots. Authorities procurement cards, which ended up released by Labour in 1997, expense taxpayers more than £1billion a yr. Critics say that paying on the cards – issued to civil servants and state workers – is badly managed, and workers can be tempted to use them for individual expenses.
 



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The Electoral Commission’s 166 employees members spent the equivalent of just over £2,000 every. A lot of their paying went on travel, food and accommodation for workers who were on the road – but the cards were utilized for trivial quantities as properly. One worker expended £10 topping up their cellular mobile phone, and yet another compensated £29 for ‘SMS text messaging’. Miss Watson was amongst people who topped up Oyster cards, used for London’s public transport, with the procurement cards. The commission explained it retains a stock of the journey cards for organization use, which are occasionally topped up, and in all £936 was spent on Oyster cards. Other charges at the commission incorporated 86p for milk and £6.27 for ‘cakes for election work’. In a single case, £2.85 was charged for a retirement card for a workers member.

Up-market place accommodation: A senior member of staff was put up frequently at the Dolphin Property apartments in Westminster, at costs of up to £301.41 for each night
The commission also used the cards to shell out for ‘fruity Fridays’, on which personnel were offered with fruit, and ‘munchy Mondays’, which saw snacks handed out. A total of £57.39 was expended on pedometers for ‘walking Wednesday’, when employees ended up encouraged to wander to the office environment. Between the quango’s other spending was £3,370 for an ‘integrity meeting’ at the St Ermin’s hotel in London. The talks with police officers about electoral fraud ended up staged in the 4-star hotel, which is much less than one hundred yards from Scotland Garden.In yet another situation, a senior member of personnel was put up repeatedly at the up-marketplace Dolphin House serviced apartments in Westminster, at expenses of up to £301.41 for each night. A spokesman for the commission mentioned it paid out for a space because the official in issue lived in Glasgow and required accommodation in London – nevertheless she is outlined as a member of staff at the quango’s London headquarters. Taxpayer-funded credit cards also paid out for a 12 months’s lease on an office in Exeter, assumed to be the commission’s West of England regional base, which arrived to far more  than £38,000, alongside with the linked pc equipment and stationery. Skip Watson utilised the cards to pay for taxis from stations to her residence in Hackney, rail fares and a organization-class flight to a conference in Sydney which charge £3,349.09.She also used them to acquire lunch for new appointments, with a ‘commission dinner’ just prior to Christmas costing £338. Miss Watson, 47, is a extended-standing quangocrat who has been described as a ‘modern militant’. She served as head of the now-defunct Equivalent Possibilities Commission, labored for left-wing pressure team Charter 88 and is the co-creator of a book called The Human Rights Act Toolkit.In 2009/ten she attained just over £100,000 for her operate at the commission, but lost yet another of her quango work soon after her contract as a board member of the Audit Commission, a body staying abolished by Communities Secretary Eric Pickles, was not renewed.A spokesman for the Electoral Commission mentioned ‘every solitary payment’ on a procurement card has to be authorised, and this is only completed so when it is ‘the most efficient and price-powerful way of spending for a thing’. Matthew Sinclair, director of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, stated the figures showed ‘yet once more why this sort of publication wants to be a typical need’ to promote transparency and avert ‘ever a lot more profligate investing’.He added: ‘Officials require to realise that it just can’t be acceptable to invest like this when family members with enormous pressure on their budgets are picking up the invoice.’