The Foreign Office has spent £500,000 on lavish carpets and wallpapers in just 12 months

Among the splurges, over £8,000 at a luxury lighting designer, over £3,000 at The White Company for interior design - and over £30,000 went to luxury furniture stores

Both Dominic Raab and Liz Truss served as Foreign Secretary during the period (

Image: Getty Images)

The Foreign Office has spent nearly half a million pounds of taxpayers' money on lavish furnishings such as luxury carpets and wallpaper in just 12 months.

The splurges included over £8,000 at Chelsom Ltd, a luxury lighting designer, while over £3,000 was spent at The White Company on interior design.

Rugs and carpets accounted for a large share of spending, with almost £4,000 spent on two purchases from Lady Deirdre Dyson's collection of rugs and carpets and £2,382 spent on a single purchase from Lady Deirdre Dyson's boutique. hand woven rug Weaver Green.

An additional £8,000 was spent on rugs and carpets at four other high-end designers.

On decoration, just over £7,000 was spent at Osborne & Little, the family wallpaper business of former Chancellor George Osborne, and £11,500 was paid to The Romo Group, a luxury wallpaper and fabrics brand selling cushions up to £205 and wallpaper up to £324 per roll.

Over £30,000 was also spent on luxury furniture stores, including Heals, The Cotswold Company and Ercol.

The bosses of Lulu Lytle, the creator of the controversial Downing Street makeover (

Picture:

Lulu Lytle)

Figures are for the year to August 2022, when the Foreign Office was overseen by Dominic Raab and Liz Truss.

Labour spent months asking hundreds of parliamentary questions and freedom of information requests to collect the information.

The party dubbed the findings "the GPC files" because department staff used government procurement cards (GPCs) to fund the spending.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs' elaborate furnishing expenses evoke memories of