Tories blew £1.6m on furniture and fittings for their own ministerial offices

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The eye-watering bill included the Health department spending almost half a million pounds moving to an open-plan arrangement in 2023 – before reverting to individual offices in 2024

THE Tories spent £1.6 million on new furniture and fittings for their own ministerial offices during their last two years in power,

The eye-watering bill included the Health department spending almost half a million pounds moving to an open-plan arrangement in 2023 – before reverting to individual offices in 2024.

The biggest spenders were the Department for Education, while Gillian Keegan was the Secretary of State.

They spent more than £600,000 on a new suite of ministerial offices, including a £2,000 set of push-to-open drawers for each minister, with an integrated mini-fridge.

The Culture Department also spent more than £120,000 on a range of varnished wood desks, meeting tables and coffee tables for their ministers’ offices, as well as soft furnishing items, painting and decoration.

Labour ’s Emily Thornberry said: “We all need offices that are fit to work in, and no-one is going to object to a necessary level of upkeep on furniture and fittings for government ministers, but I do object to the brass neck of the Tories pretending that the same thing didn’t happen when they were in power.”

The Ministry of Defence spent £27,000 on new wallpaper and carpets for their ministerial offices, the Department for the Environment spent more than a thousand pounds each on two floor-standing lamps, and the Wales Office spent almost £4,000 on reupholstering five leather chairs.

The figures were uncovered by Ms Thornberry after a similar exercise by Tory MP Ashley Fox revealed that ministers in the new Labour government had spent more than £130,000 on furniture and fittings for their offices in their first months after arriving in power.

In total, the figures reveal Tory ministers spent more than twelve times on office refurbishment in their last two years in government than Labour ministers spent on theirs.

“The serious point here is that we are facing a Tory party which is trying to pretend that the last fourteen years didn’t happen, and that the parlous state in which they left our economy and our public finances should all be magically forgotten,” Ms Thornberry added.

“It’s important for all of us that we don’t let them get away with that.”