American country group Home Free once sang about having “champagne taste on a beer budget”—a phrase that comes to mind when looking at some of the Ministry of Defence’s (MoD) travel expenses. While frontline forces face budget pressures, some MoD officials have been enjoying the kind of VIP treatment usually reserved for washed-up rock stars on a nostalgia tour.
Using Freedom of Information (FoI) requests, I uncovered a staggering £2.1 million spent on chauffeur-driven cars and taxis in the year to April 2024—a 45% increase on the previous year, despite ongoing budget constraints. That’s enough to pay the annual salaries of 83 private soldiers.
One trip alone, a 1,060-mile return journey from Chepstow to Inverness, cost an eye-watering £4,500. Another, from Loughborough to Scotland’s east coast, set the department back £3,500.
I spoke to William Yarwood of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, who described the spending as “a pointless waste of money.”
Meanwhile, Tobias Ellwood, a former MP and Defence Committee chair, argued that the real outrage should be directed at underinvestment in defence: “If people were aware of how vulnerable we are, there would be a greater outcry to spend more on defence.”
The full report was published exclusively in The Sun on Sunday on 2nd February 2025 and can be read below.
