Expensive greenery
Taxpayers have been lumbered with a bill for £438,000 to RENT trees for an MPs' office block, it emerged yesterday.
The "opulent" weeping fig trees were imported from Florida in 2001.
Since then, the taxpayer has had to fork out £32,500 A YEAR to hire them from Bristol-based Plant Care UK.
That makes a total of £438,000 — including VAT.
The dozen trees adorn Westminster's Portcullis House — which itself cost £28million more than originally estimated.
The final cost was a staggering £234million — with the total pushed up by a bronze-clad roof and a £327,000 escalator.
Critics last night reacted angrily to the cost, which was uncovered by Freedom of Information requests. Robert Oxley of the Taxpayers' Alliance said "It's astonishing that Parliament, faced with an overwhelming need to find savings, is handing over tens of thousands of pounds of taxpayers' money each year just to rent a few trees.
This opulent greenery is a monument to the Parliamentary authorities' profligacy. Something more affordable should have been planted."
Labour MP Kevan Jones said: "For this money you could have planted a small forest."
And Lib Dem Tessa Munt added: "This contract was signed in a time of plenty, but now it is not a time of plenty so this should be looked at." A Parliament spokeswoman said the contract was "under review".
She added: "The House's savings targets will be taken into account when the contract is considered.
"The trees also have a role in conditioning the environment within the courtyard space."
