CEO Neil McCrossan said: 'As we have been highlighting for some time, across Government, hundreds of millions of pounds are spent every year on vehicle rental and the payment of private mileage allowances to staff using their own cars on Government business. However there is no overall control and co-ordination of this spend and despite the spending review – there is no sign of this changing. As far as we can tell every arm of local and national Government, all the emergency services and the military will continue to run their own tender exercises.  This just does not make commercial sense – at a time when the Government claims to be seeking out waste and driving up efficiencies.'

Earlier this month retail tycoon Sir Philip Green identified in his report a major discrepancy paid out in vehicle rental by the public sector and said it was an indication of the inefficiency of procurement and lack of consistency.

Sir Philip found that the daily rental price for a D-sector car varied between £27 and £119, and that rental services accounted for £29 million of Government annual spend.

Mr McCrossan said: 'The solution has to be a single procurement exercise with services accessed through a single portal available to all Government users. Every rental provider could participate in – and benefit from – this approach.  This isn’t pie in the sky. From a systems perspective we can deliver this now.

'Clearly there is still some detail to be revealed but the initial signs are not promising and at Nexus we will continue to lobby for a common sense approach to procurement with the hope that the Government will start to see logic.'