ECONOMIC Secretary to the Treasury Patricia Hewitt has revealed why MPs can consider home to work journeys as business mileage when millions of company car drivers are banned from doing so - the ministerial red box. She told MPs: 'I enjoy the benefit of being driven in a ministerial car, but it is not provided for my private use. No taxable benefit therefore arises.

The real reason for providing a car to drive me from my home to my place of work is to transport not me but the red boxes, which I am not allowed to carry on public transport.'

Michael Jack (Cons) retorted: 'When the Economic Secretary was in opposition she sought, as a point of principle, to amend the Conservative Government's tax policies. If this matter is a point of principle, why has she not put it into practice and reversed tax proposals relating to the use of ministerial cars?' Hewitt told him: 'I would travel by bus from my London home but, given that the red box travels by car, it is more sensible to travel with it.'