Lord Irvine's bill for advisers rises from £400,000 to £2.5m

Lord Irvine's annual bill for advisers and consultants has rocketed from £400,000 to £2.5m since Labour came to power. Fees paid by the Lord Chancellor to lawyers, accountants and business consultants have increased sixfold in as many years, the steepest rise by any government department.

Last night MPs and legal aid lawyers said that the "huge increases" raised serious questions about the "wastefulness" of Lord Irvine's Whitehall empire. The figures, released in a parliamentary written answer, are bound to add to the outcry over Lord Irvine. Only weeks ago, he was accused of extravagance and insensitivity when he accepted a £22,000 pay rise, four times the rate of inflation. He has since refused it.

A spokesman for Lord Irvine said the external payments were "commercially confidential" and declined to identify which, or how many, consultants had benefited from the £2.5m.

David Laws, the Liberal Democrat spokesman on central government finances, who is researching Labour's spending on external advisers, called on Lord Irvine to justify the payments. He said the bill was proportionately higher than any other government department and promised to use the parliamentary process to push Lord Irvine further. Mr Laws added that it was important to know whether the Lord Chancellor's Department (LCD) consultancies represented value for money.

Further figures from the LCD reveal the bill for external advisers to the Courts Service, the agency for which Lord Irvine is responsible, had jumped from £690,000 in 1997 to £4m last year. Richard Miller, director of the Legal Aid Practitioners Group, said: "I wish he would pay legal aid solicitors at the same rate he pays his consultant lawyers, who get 10 times the legal aid rate."

A spokesman for Lord Irvine said: "The rise in spending on external consultancies is a reflection of an increase in the department's responsibilities over the past few years, the breadth of the reform programme, and a number of initiatives on improving court services, such as through the use of new technology." The £319m scheme to computerise magistrates' courts in England and Wales has been described as a "shocking" waste of money and one of the worst IT projects yet.

Lord Irvine of Lairg's £3bn empire has recently restyled itself the Department for Justice, Rights and the Constitution and it is on the verge of its biggest expansion, with an increase in staff from the present 12,000 to 20,000. Eventually, that is expected to be 25,000.