TORY ministers have overseen a culture of “lavish spending and a serious catalogue of wasting taxpayer cash,” Labour charged yesterday as it published a dossier on government expenses.

Shadow attorney general Emily Thornberry said that, from the party’s analysis of the use of government procurement cards (GPCs), “you would think we were in the last days of Rome, not the worst cost-of-living crisis for decades.”

Spending on Civil Service credit cards across 14 Whitehall departments hit £145.5 million in 2021, the party said, up from the £84.9m recorded in 2010-11, when Tory ministers were enjoying their first year in Downing Street this century.