A TRANSPORT quango has been accused of "sleight of hand" after it emerged that its directors billed taxpayers for almost £50,000 in travel, hotel and entertainment costs which never appeared among their published expenses.
Senior directors at Strathclyde Partnership for Transport (SPT) enjoyed business class flights, first-class train travel, a £400 business dinner and European junkets without ever having to lodge the costs among their official expenses, which are routinely published online every four weeks.
SPT began publishing its directors' expenses on its website in 2010 as part of a "commitment to openness and transparency" following controversy over excessive spending by its previous senior management.
However, data obtained by The Herald under freedom of information reveal that while the published directors' expenses total £10,942 from 2010/11 to date, SPT has paid out an additional £49,391 between May 2010 and the end of June this year to cover the cost of flights, train fares, taxis, hotels and meals for its directors.
As these were paid for using company credit cards or booked directly by SPT, directors were never out of pocket and had no need to submit expenses claims.
Chief executive Gordon Maclennan flew business class to Vancouver in 2013/14 at a cost to taxpayers of £2,624, his published expenses state that his entire travel claim for the year totalled just £8.60.
Assistant chief executive Eric Stewart's total published expenses of £416 in 2011/12 are outweighed by the cost of a single business dinner he hosted in May that year, which cost SPT £427.
In October 2014, both men travelled by first-class rail to Birmingham for a bus expo at a cost of £529, yet their combined travel expenses for the year, published online, total only £61.
In 2014, a series of business trips to London, Bilbao, Vancouver, Copenhagen, Zurich and Vienna by Mr Maclennan, Mr Stewart and senior director, Charles Hoskins, cost taxpayers more than £17,000, including £9000 alone for return business class flights from London to Vancouver.
There were also trips to transport conferences in Stockholm, Geneva, London, and Milan which cost £9,519 for flights, hotels, rail fares and Oyster cards.
Since May 2010, the quango has also spent nearly £15,000 sending directors to transport awards dinners, charity balls and Burns' Suppers.
A staff retirement party in March 2012 cost taxpayers £330, with a further two "retirement lunches" funded out of the public purse at a cost of £122.
Even sums as little as £3.50 for a return rail fare to Paisley are missing from the 'Directors' Expenses' published online.
SPT stressed that foreign trips must be notified to the SPT membership, whose role is to scrutinise and hold the transport body to account.
It also publishes annual figures for its total spending on overseas travel and hospitality - but these amounts are not broken down by director, or how the money was spent.
Bus campaigner and Green MSP for Glasgow, Patrick Harvie, said the "lack of clarity" over directors' expenses was damaging.
He added: "This organisation should be firmly focused on delivering better public transport for Glasgow and the surrounding area. Most people reading these revelations on their bus to work will ask why SPT is spending their money on business class flights and expensive lunches at all, and at the very least we must have full transparency instead of this sleight of hand.”
Eddie Duffy, regional organiser for Unite, which represents bus drivers and Subway staff, said: “These sums would be better reinvested across the SPT infrastructure than on unnecessary expenditure. Perhaps it’s time the directors at SPT followed the example of the general public and practised a period of frugality.”
A spokeswoman for SPT said: “SPT is fully transparent – all expenditure on overseas travel and hospitality is published on SPT’s website. Additionally, it is common practice to have a central booking system for travel, accommodation and other business-related expenditure. Centralised bookings provide a greater degree of control over costs and consistency across the entire organisation. All expenditure is business-related, supported by receipts, subject to scrutiny and both properly authorised, as well as audited.”
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