I was bemused to see the John Lewis list debate still chuntering on today.. yawn. But aren’t there gross wastes of public money going on that don’t even give someone’s spouse and kids the lasting benefit of a lovely new sofa?

Just for interest, a friend of Recess Monkey did a quick calculation of David Amess MP’s questions to the Health Secretary on abortion. Recent objects of urgent public concern include this:

‘Mr. Amess: To ask the Secretary of State for Health (1) how many times the 2007 Abortion Statistics have been downloaded from his Department’s website. [216353] (2) how many hard copies of the 2007 Abortion Statistics have been provided by his Department free of charge; to whom; at what cost to the public purse; and if he will make a statement. [216354]’

Unbelievably, he gets an answer! On 14th July:

‘Dawn Primarolo: Between 19 and 30 June there have been 783 downloads of the PDF of “Abortion Statistics, England and Wales: 2007” and 764 downloads of the tables in Excel format. Further to the answer I gave the hon. Member on 12 June 2008, Official Report, column 515W, paper copies of the statistical bulletin were made available in the Vote Office as he requested. 50 copies were provided and no estimate has been made of the cost of doing so. No other hard copies of the bulletin have been distributed.’

In the 2007–08 Parliamentary session (so far!) Amess has had 71 questions answered on abortion with another 8 pending (79 written questions in total) which multiplied by the average cost for answering a question (£138 – referenced in Telegraph or in this article in the Times) means that his pointless questions have cost us all £10,902. According to TheyWorkforYou this serial department-botherer asked a gigantic 701 PQs in the last year (not just on abortion) which they say is ‘well above average amongst MPs’. Based on the £138 average, that’s incurred a whopping £96,738 in answering them.

His abortion questions invariably relate to publicly-available info which his researcher could call up in seconds, since they’re presumably more intimate than they’d ever want to be with the latest abortion stats. Any other obsessive would have been brushed off long ago for sending endless green ink letters to the government. Shouldn’t elected representatives (in these cash-strapped times) be a little less profligate with public funds?

editor[at]recessmonkey.com