Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude has publicly defended the civil service’s use of government procurement cards, following an attack on them at the Conservative Party Conference by communities secretary Eric Pickles.

Pickles lambasted the cards in his speech to the conference yesterday, saying: “With their corporate credit card – the so-called ‘Government Procurement Card’ – Labour and their staff wined and dined at the finest restaurants at your expense.”

Pickles added that the coalition is “clamping down on the abuse of government credit cards and opening their spending up to public scrutiny.”

However, in reply to a CSW question at a fringe event later in the day, Maude said: “There’s nothing inherently wrong about government procurement cards. Actually, it’s a way to procure relatively small items of expenditure and to know what’s actually being spent, so it’s a management tool. These are not bad things to have.”

He also said that the cards are not frequently abused across Whitehall: “Overwhelmingly, government procurement cards are used by the Ministry of Defence: 70 per cent of transactions are through the Ministry of Defence. [Purchases are] relatively small-scale elsewhere and it’s a useful management tool,” he said.

NAO figures suggest that traditional expenses systems cost £28 more per transaction than the cards.

Click here to see all news and features from Civil Service World

Written by Joshua Chambers, CSW