Pope's trip to Birmingham cost Government £10million

The Pope's visit to Britain has so far cost Whitehall departments £10 million, according to official figures.

The Foreign Office said it hoped to publish the full cost to the taxpayer by the end of next month.

Pope Benedict XVI's four-day state visit in September, the first papal trip to Britain since 1982, took him to London, Birmingham, Edinburgh and Glasgow.

A written ministerial statement on departmental budgets showed that five departments each transferred £1.85 million to the Foreign Office to pay for the visit - a total of £9.25 million.

These were the Department for Education (DoE), Department for International Development (DFID), Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC), Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), and the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG).

The Foreign Office said later it would pay approximately £0.75 million.

The National Secular Society condemned the bill and warned that the "real eye opener" would be policing and security costs.

President Terry Sanderson said: "The spreading around of the costs of this visit over Government departments seems an extraordinary way to justify it.

"The Department for the Environment was roped in to pay apparently because the Pope feels strongly about environmentalism.

"But however the Government cuts it, in the end it all comes out of the taxpayer's pocket.

"What we haven't seen yet are the enormous costs of policing and security which, despite freedom of information requests, the police seem reluctant to reveal.

"We have a feeling that will be the real eye opener on the cost of staging this religious jamboree."

SIC: BM/UK