Boris Johnson spent nearly £1,000 ferrying Brexit deal around in chauffeur-driven car

Document was given red carpet treatment

The withdrawal agreement was transported from Brussels to London and back on 24 January 2020 (AP)

Boris Johnson's Brexit deal was ferried around in a chauffeur-driven car to be signed, at the cost to the taxpayer of over £900, its has been revealed.

The withdrawal agreement was taken from Brussels to London and back again by high-speed Eurostar train, with no expense spared, according to receipts uncovered by The Independent.

The Foreign Office says that the gold-plated arrangements were needed "for the safe and timely transport of the withdrawal agreement, in order to ensure the UK’s departure from the EU on 31 January 2020".

A freedom of information request found the total cost of transporting the document was £902.56, money which came out of the existing Foreign Office budget.

"The withdrawal agreement was transported from Brussels to London and back on 24 January 2020," the Foreign Office said in a statement.

"The text was transported by EU officials from the Council Secretariat, accompanied by one UK civil servant.

"The total UK-related cost of the associated travel – Eurostar and transport in a secure car with a security cleared driver – was £902.56 inclusive of VAT."

Many commercial couriers, including Royal Mail, offer international next-day or same-day services for a fraction of the price.

Acting leader of the Liberal Democrats Ed Davey said: “Yet more money thrown away for the Tories' ideological Brexit experiment. But this is just the thin end of the wedge compared to all the billions drained out of the UK economy. This was the most expensive taxi ride in history.”

The red-carpet treatment for the document was arguably better value than a similar diplomatic trip undertaken by British diplomats nearly three years earlier.

In 2017 Theresa May spent £985.50 delivering her Article 50 letter to Brussels and firing the starting gun on Brexit talks. That earlier expedition took two UK civil servants, and the letter only needed to travel in one direction.

Both the cost of both pale in comparison to Brexit itself, which the Office for Budget Responsibility said this week had cost to the British economy around 2 per cent of GDP, or about £40bn since the referendum – mostly in lower business investment. That figure amount to £1,200 per person.