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Date: 30/11/1995

Faced with a ban on claiming expenses for taking taxis between stations, hotels, airports and meeting places, our ever-resourceful Euro MPs have set a good example by dramatically reducing the number of taxi rides they take in a bid to cut the cost to the poor old European taxpayer.

Unfortunately, this well-intended policy has not done the trick, because the number of journeys in official parliamentary cars has risen in the wake of the taxi ban.

Officials in the Parliament's number-crunching department were originally very pleased to find that the overall number of trips by both taxi and pool car taken by Euro MPs is less than the number that used to be taken by taxi alone.

However, the cost of running official cars works out considerably higher than a taxi.

Consequently, more cash is spent ferrying MEPs from place to place. When a cost-conscious senior MEP raised the problem, he was fobbed off with the explanation: “Ah, but what is important is transparency, not the budget.”