A Minister has defended Government credit card spending claiming Labour had a worse record on the issue.
A report today highlighted the cash being spent by Ministers and led to allegations from the opposition that the Government were being frivolous with public funds.
But Richard Holden hit back, telling GB News the figure was 85% lower than when Labour was last in power.
Mr Holden said: “There’ll be some things like international conferences, which are always going to be expensive. In fact, it’s probably more expensive sometimes not to stay at these conference hotels when you consider security and travel to some of these venues.
“I myself was up last week in Lancashire, I drove myself up and some of the stuff from my team, and also stayed at the very nicely appointed Premier Inn.
“So there’s I think most of the time, all of this stuff can be done at relatively low cost, but there are some circumstances where that’s just not possible.
“There’ll be some things like international conferences, which are always going to be expensive. In fact, it’s probably more expensive sometimes not to stay at these conference hotels when you consider security and travel to some of these venues.
“I myself was up last week in Lancashire, I drove myself up and some of the stuff from my team, and also stayed at the very nicely appointed Premier Inn.
“So there’s I think most of the time, all of this stuff can be done at relatively low cost, but there are some circumstances where that’s just not possible.”
Meanwhile, Mr Holden also told how the Government is aiming to treat an extra 1.1 million people in a network of NHS Community Diagnostic Centres, housing minister Richard Holden has said.
He said: “People didn’t get a chance to go to their GPs during the pandemic, so there’s a bit of a backlog there in terms of people waiting for their diagnosis and what we want to do is try and get as many of those people through as quickly as possible.
“We’ve got over a billion pounds of funding set aside for this broader programme around catch up. This is a crucial part of that and we’re going to have around 160 centres in the end for this.
“We’ve got 92 already set up and another 19 coming on stream this year. This is about trying to catch those things early for people because actually for them, sometimes it’ll be the good news that actually there’s nothing to worry about.
“Sometimes it’ll be catching things earlier for people and that also has a really beneficial effect in terms of reducing costs for the NHS but also there’s better chances of recovery as well for people.”
In a discussion during Breakfast with Eamonn Holmes and Saira Khan, he said: “People will be made aware of these when they’re in their areas.
“What we want to do is have them in the most convenient places possible for people so that they’re easy to access, open more than your average GP surgery, so that there’s more time there and more slots can be filled and with specialists in those different fields of diagnostics as well.
“So it’s about making them as accessible as possible. All of the normal NHS procedures will be there to protect people and their data, etc but it’s about trying to get as many people through as possible, because hopefully these centres, we’re thinking of around 1.1 million extra people being diagnosed much sooner through this programme.
“It will help to try and get some of those concerns that people have dealt with much more quickly than if they were just going through the normal process.”
