A Daily Telegraph article that claimed the Health and Safety Executive "lavished" £6m of taxpayers' money on flights and luxury hotels bears no correlation to the experience of the union's HSE members, Prospect has said.

In a letter, submitted for publication, Prospect said far from using taxpayer-funded credit cards for ‘shopping sprees at high street and online stores', "government procurement cards can be a far more cost-effective and expedient means of obtaining items - vital for safety investigations in the public interest - than any time-consuming procurement process with subsequent administration charges would be.

"It addition, the article also fails to recognise that the costs of any items acquired as part of an investigation are recovered by the HSE in all successful prosecutions."

Click here to read Prospect's response in full.