Six of the worst revelations from Labour’s procurement files

Labour got much of the lobby exercised last week with its latest wheeze: mysteriously rebranding its Twitter account as ‘the GPC files’ and sending out a link to ‘theGPCfiles’ to launch 7 a.m Monday morning. Sadly, for fans of the Global Powerlifting Committee eagerly expecting a string of revelations, the website in question focuses on government procurement cards. These allow purchases to be made directly against departmental budgets without going through regular invoicing procedures.

Dozens of parliamentary questions and Freedom of Information requests have been tabled by Labour in recent months to try to find out what this money has been spent on. The website itself looks like an attempt to copy Sky and Tortoise’s recent ‘Westminster Files’ project by increasing the transparency around information which Whitehall makes it difficult to obtain. And while the ‘GPC files’ don’t have the same punch as the expenses scandal, Mr S has nevertheless had an enjoyable morning trawling through the details online.