PRESCOTT'S DEPARTMENT RUNS UP £10,000 MONTHLY TAXI BILL

Beleaguered, punch-throwing Deputy PM John 'Two Jags' Prescott - he enjoys the use of a ministerial one, and owns a Jaguar himself - heads a department whose combined taxi bill amounts to more than £2,500 a week, it has been revealed. Expenses, it is reported, seem to be spiraling out of control in the Cabinet Department, a giant sub-organisation of vague purpose. Its taxi expenditure has exceeded £135,000 annually in the years since the Labour government took power.

'Whether it's ministers or officials who are cavorting around the capital and beyond, it's been an exponential increase. Most people on modest incomes - and paying a good deal of these incomes in taxes - are forced to struggle to work in a daily ordeal, because of the catastrophic public transport system', said Tory Treasury spokesman John Bercow, whose investigations unearthed the sky-high taxi bills. 'The government seems to think that it is perfectly normal and acceptable to run up bills of around £2500 per week on taxis'. The Cabinet office is tasked with jobs such as the overseeing of the Social Exclusion Unit and the Delivery Unit - as well as a range of ill-defined other responsibilities - and its huge number of sub-departments and enormous staff complement are seen in opposition circles as being 'tools' of Downing Street.

Mr Prescott and his junior ministers are therefore seen as having few defined tasks. Ministers are provided with an official car and driver for use on 'official business'.A spokesman for the Cabinet Office suggested that the breathtaking taxi bill was justified, because transport costs 'fluctuated' from year to year.The department is geographically widely spread, and the official said that many staff needed to commute between buildings.Taxis were the most cost-efficient way of doing this. To the immense joy of the taxi trade - particularly the radio circuits - the trend in this and other ministries and departments is manna from heaven. Chancellor Lord Irvine's department racked up a bill of £50,175 in nine months, while the taxi tally in Jack Straw's Foreign Office was a spectacular £400,000 over the same period.