Taxpayers’ money used to pay parking fines

An investigation has been ordered into multi-million pound bill run up by a university's staff on official credit cards. Around £5million was spent over a two-and-a-half year period on everything from tickets to the Olympic Games in China to payment for a professor's parking fines, it has been revealed.

Leeds Metropolitan University, which has around 30,000 staff, receives half its £160million annual budget from public funds.

Other spending by 190 university card holders between May 2006 and December last year included the payment of at least six parking fines.