Doomed Labour's £1.3 TRILLION last spending spree revealed: As the economy nosedived, your millions were wasted on grandiose schemes

T he extraordinary extent of Labour's final spending spree - which cost the public purse £1.3trillion even as the economy was sinking - was laid bare for the first time last night.

Bills included £50million to promote ballet and music, £5.6million for pensions for the Royal Household and £38.4million for gipsy encampments.

Details of the spending - which saw public expenditure rise by 15 per cent over two years - are contained in a vast Treasury database which the Coalition has made public.







The so-called Combined Online Information System (Coins) is so impenetrable that experts are having to pore over it to extract details.



The first comprehensive analysis, by software firm Rosslyn Analytics for the Daily Mail, shows that even as the economy was spiralling into recession, Labour kept the spending taps on - sanctioning expenditure that ranged from the sublime to the ridiculous.

A portion of the money will have been to support Gordon Brown's economic philosophy to increase public spending to stimulate the fragile economy. But the figures also reveal a significant level of more questionable spending

A portion of the money will have been to support Gordon Brown's economic philosophy to increase public spending to stimulate the fragile economy. But the figures also reveal a significant level of more questionable spending.



They show that the department run by former Children's Secretary and Labour leadership hopeful Ed Balls lavished nearly £50million on programmes for ballet, dance and music in schools.



The National Measurements Office, which orders retailers to weigh their goods in kilograms rather than pounds, in line with EU diktats, cost £150million. Another quango, Natural England, cost £442million.

The Department for Environment also spent £95million on an obscure 'National Environment Enjoyment programme'. Initially staff could not say what the money was spent on.



They later clarified it was for management of national parks.

The Cabinet Office had to fund £14billion for gold-plated pensions for Whitehall staff, more than double the amount that needs to be cut from public spending this year.



The Coins figures show that pension costs for the Royal Household reached £5.6million, while highly-paid judges received £267million in taxpayers' money for their retirement schemes.



The Electoral Commission, which has been widely criticised for its handling of the election and its failure to prevent postal voting fraud, cost £48million to run over two years.

THE £38.4M GIPSY SITE FUND

As taxpayers struggled to afford their own homes through the recession, more than £38.4million was used to fund sites for travellers.

Councils were asked to apply for the grants through the Department for Communities and Local Government for funds to 'provide amenities and purchase sites for gipsies'.

Previous guidelines released by Labour stated that gipsies needed caravan sites as they suffer an ' aversion to bricks and mortar'. Even areas of outstanding natural beauty were not offlimits.

Yesterday the new Coalition Government axed the grants. A spokesman for the department said: 'The current economic climate means that we need to act quickly and take difficult decisions about reducing grants due to be paid to local government.'



And in the middle of the recession, MPs cost the state £178million in salary and expenses.

Bailing out the banks cost taxpayers nearly as much as funding the NHS over the last two years.

Taxpayers shelled out £132.4billion to bail out financial institutions other than Northern Rock and Bradford and Bingley. Northern Rock cost £ 20.3billion to nationalise while Bradford and Bingley was even more expensive, at £24.6billion.

Overall, pension payouts were the third most expensive area of government expenditure - underlining the high costs to Britain of an ageing population.



At nearly £128.4billion, the cost of paying the state pension is more than double England's £59billion schools budget.



And while Britain is struggling with a recession, the Labour Government continued to send money abroad.

Around £1.6billion was given to the European Union to distribute to poor countries, despite the UK already having its own Department for International Development (DfID).

A further £1.3billion was spent on 'reducing poverty in Asia', the continent that has seen the largest surge in economic growth in the past decade.

The Government has said it will make the database figures more accessible by August.