Spending on payment cards
Details of all spending on government credit cards by civil servants in your department over the last 3 years.
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Details
Request
Details of all spending on government credit cards by civil servants in your department over the last 3 years, detailing the item, date and purpose. Where the payments were made by senior civil servant, please also provide the name of the individual.
Disclosure
The Treasury operates a corporate card system. This is a credit card issued to frequent travellers to enable them to pay for travel that cannot be booked through the usual travel provider and for subsistence.
The corporate card system used in HMT puts the responsibility for paying the card bills on the cardholder themselves - HMT makes no payments to the card issuing company. Once staff have incurred spending on official business, they pay the card bill and then claim reimbursement once the spending has been approved. The approval process requires the cardholder to make a claim, supported by receipts, which must be approved within 5 days by the claimants line manager and then by Accounts Payable. Once these approvals are in place, the claimant is reimbursed.
The spreadsheet contains details of all spending on corporate cards. There are tabs for each of the years requested.
We have withheld names of all staff including the Senior Civil Service (SCS) under section 40 FoI Act which is an absolute exemption. Section 40 exempts personal information from disclosure if its release would contravene one of the Data Protection principles. In this case, disclosure of the information would contravene the first Data Protection principle, which states that personal information must be processed fairly and lawfully. Whilst SCS names are released in many circumstances the information relevant to this request is considered to give rise to special concerns. We consider that it would be unfair for SCS members to be scrutinised for expenditure that is in accordance with Government rules.