Prescott cost taxpayers £500,000....and that's just for travel and entertaining

Even though he had been stripped of most of his duties after his affair with Tracey Temple, the former deputy prime minister continued to travel around the world at the public's expense.

As a result, the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister rung up a bill of £507,000 for travel, subsistence and hospitality in the 2006/07 financial year.

Mr Prescott visited countries including the U.S., Canada, Japan, South Korea, China, Malaysia and Mexico.

In total, he made 11 trips overseas for meetings on subjects including climate change, the slave trade and the EU. In October, his ten- day trip to the Far East cost £11,000.

Tory communities spokesman Eric Pickles said: "It's a scandalous waste of money. At a time when Gordon Brown's NHS cuts were forcing thousands of doctors" and nurses' posts to be scrapped, John Prescott was spending £500,000 a year on entertainment and travel, and he didn't even have a proper job to do.

"With Gordon Brown holding the purse strings taxes have gone up and up, but all this taxpayers' money has gone down the drain."

This financial year, Mr Prescott, 69, also went on a "farewell tour" of the Caribbean and the U.S., estimated to have cost around £15,000.

However, Philip Cox, who worked as Mr Prescott's principal private secretary, defended the expenditure.

He said Mr Prescott had done an important job in improving foreign relations and tackling climate change.

It also emerged yesterday that Mr Prescott - famed for mangling the English language - has signed up with a highprofile speaking agency.

Jeremy Lee Associates said there had been a "staggering amount of interest" in Mr Prescott, who is expected to give both keynote addresses and after-dinner speeches.

The agency described Mr Prescott as a "colourful character", well known for "punching a farmer during the 2001 election".

•John Prescott is still living in his grace-and-favour Whitehall apartment more than a month after he stepped down as deputy prime minister.

Gordon Brown allowed Mr Prescott to stay in Admiralty House in central London while he was recovering from pneumonia. But MPs are concerned Mr Prescott is still living in the taxpayer-funded flat weeks after leaving office.

There has been speculation that Mr Prescott is planning to move into a £700,000 apartment near the Houses of Parliament and Foreign Office Minister Lord Malloch-Brown is expected to take on Admiralty House when he moves out.

Grace-and-favour homes have long been a source of embarrassment for Mr Prescott, most infamously when he was forced to give up use of the country estate Dorneywood after being pictured playing croquet while he was supposed to be running the country.