MINISTER WITHOUT A JOB COSTS TAXPAYER £2,000,000 A YEAR.

John Prescott is costing British taxpayers an estimated £2 million a year to remain in office, despite not having a proper Government job.

A new survey has revealed that the Deputy Prime Minister's salary, pension, allowances, official car, grace-and-favour Whitehall home, ministerial office, Whitehall staff, official website, and travel at home and abroad, totals an astonishing £2,019,000, even though he was stripped of his ministerial department in Tony Blair's May reshuffle.

The full breakdown of the "cost of John Prescott" is as follows: salary and pension: £169,908; allowances: £105,494; official car: £49,000; other travel, including foreign trips: £93,034; grace and favour flat in Admiralty House: £195,500; office staff in Whitehall: £1,300,000; office in Whitehall: £64,267; departmental re-branding: £12,000; new official website: £30,000.

The survey results were published just as the Government quietly admitted in a new handbook on ministerial responsibilities that the 'Office of the Deputy Prime Minister' is still a Government department, which remains separate from the Cabinet Office and from the Department for Communities & Local Government.