Cabinet Ministers have to travel.

The Premier must represent the Island at meetings with foreign governments, conferences that are important to Bermuda business and other events. The Finance Minister must represent the Island, especially to ensure the stability and growth of international business on which the Island heavily depends.

The Tourism Minister must promote the Island as a travel destination. Other Ministers need to see best practices relating to their portfolios and so on.

No one disputes the importance of most of these trips. But it is vital that travel expenditures are spent carefully and prudently.

The $663,315 spent between June 1, 2005 and June 30, 2006 is a lot of money by any measure, and means an average of $66,331 was spent by the ten Cabinet Ministers who reported their travel spending.

One would hope they made every effort to control spending while abroad and practised some reasonable economies in keeping with their roles as the guardians of the public’s money.

What continues to be of concern is the use of per diems by Ministers.

An editorial earlier this year incorrectly stated that Ministers were not required to account for their use of Government-issued credit cards. In fact they are. But they are not required to account for how they spend the $150 per diem they are allowed to take with them. In some cases, Ministers choose not to use them at all, and in others they use them and not their credit cards.

But the main point is that they do not have to file expenses for this money on their return. In the 13-month period reported on in yesterday’s newspaper, more than $77,000 was spent using the per diems, the same amount that was spent from April 1, 2004 to December 31, 2005 — the previous period for which questions were asked in the House of Assembly. Working out averages for this kind of spending is fraught with difficulties.

The questions recently asked by Shadow Finance Minister Pat Gordon-Pamplin covered a 13-month period and she received answers from ten Ministers.

Earlier this year, she asked similar questions about the 21-month period from April 1, 2004 to December 31, 2005. These are overlapping periods and are also incomplete because not all Ministers answer the questions every time.

Nonetheless, even with those caveats, a trend seems to be developing. In the most recent period, an average of $5,900 a month was issued in per diems compared to $3,666 per month in the overlapping period from April, 2004 to December, 2005.

And in June, 2004, Opposition MP John Barritt asked Ms Cox how much had been spent in per diems by Cabinet Ministers between April 1, 2003 and March 31, 2004. The total spent in that year was $26,490, an average of around $1,300 per month. When he asked how much of that was returned, the answer was none.

More recent questions put to Financial Secretary Donald Scott on why Cabinet Ministers were not required to produce receipts for their spending received this reply: “The average per diem per trip is in the range of $450-$600.

“The expenditure is coded to a single code of overseas miscellaneous expense as distinct from hotel costs and airfare expenses. The additional record-keeping related to overseas miscellaneous expenditure out of Ministers’ per diems is not cost effective as it represents less than one per cent of total overseas expenditure on official travel.”

Mr. Scott also noted that some Cabinet Ministers choose not to use Government credit cards but opt to take a “full travel allowance”, which Government estimated used about $25,000 of the $77,000 spent in the period up to December 31, 2005.

It was not clear if the Ministers had to account for this spending, as they do for credit cards.

And a question on whether it was possible to determine how much money was returned by Ministers received this reply: “Unexpended travel cash balances returned to the Accountant General are included as part of Government-wide miscellaneous cash receipts and cannot be distinguished easily from other forms of miscellaneous cash receipts that in addition to returned travel allowances include miscellaneous furniture sales, receipts to Government for the provision of Police security at club or community events, subsidy refunds from the hospitals, etc.

“All such transactions are recorded as “miscellaneous cash receipts” which limits the capacity to provide a detailed analysis of the transactions without reverting to the originating departments.”

In effect, Mr. Scott states that it is too complicated to either get receipts or to determine how much money is returned because the amounts, as a proportion of the overall travel budget, are so small.

But an average per diem of $7,700 per Minister in the most recent reporting period is not a small amount; people have gone to jail for far less.

This is not to suggest that the system is being abused. No doubt the current Cabinet is far too upstanding and honest to even consider abusing the system. But the potential for abuse is there, and that should be of concern.