Baroness Ashton's 500-strong army of EU chauffeurs (including one who is paid £62,000 a year) EU's diplomatic service now employs almost 500 drivers to ferry officials between meetings The most expensive vehicle bought for the diplomatic service cost £182,695 Baroness Ashton, who is paid a salary of more than £250,000 as well as lavish expenses, is the highest paid female politician in the world She also enjoys the use of a bulletproof car with two chauffeurs, and a lavish grace-and-favour home in Brussels The controversial Labour peer in charge of the EU's new diplomatic service was facing fresh charges of waste last night after figures revealed that she employs nearly 500 chauffeurs - including one paid £62,000 a year. Baroness Ashton, who has faced repeated charges of profligacy since being plucked from obscurity to be the EU's first "foreign minister," paid one chauffeur a basic salary of almost £5,200 a month - equal to an annual salary of more than £62,000 a year. The EU's diplomatic service now employs almost 500 drivers to ferry officials between meetings, with many of them on lavish salaries, figures released to the European Parliament show. Baroness Ashton who is paid a salary of more than £250,000 as well as lavish expenses, is the highest paid female politician in the world The most expensive vehicle bought for the diplomatic service cost £182,695. The figures also show that chauffeurs clocked up 30,000 miles last year with no-one in the back of the car. Baroness Ashton, who is paid a salary of more than £250,000 as well as lavish expenses, is the highest paid female politician in the world. Her income is similar to that of US President Barack Obama. She also enjoys the use of a bulletproof car with two chauffeurs, and a lavish grace-and-favour home in Brussels. The total budget of her European External Action Service (EEAS) went up by 5.7 per cent last year to £442million, with Britain's share of the bill increasing to about £58million. Tory MEP Marina Yannakoudakis said the figures made a mockery of Lady Ashton's claim that she was running a lean operation. She added: "The EEAS was meant to be budget neutral, yet this year Baroness Ashton has asked for £20million more to run her expensive, inefficient and unproductive diplomatic service. Last month George Osborne announced that the UK's Foreign and Commonwealth Office would need to make savings of 6 per cent. The European Union and Baroness Ashton should be expected to do the same. These figures show the service now has four drivers per EU embassy - that is completely unwarranted. Salaries of over £60,000 are unreasonable and an army of chauffeurs driving empty cars and spitting out tonnes of carbon dioxide makes a sham of the EU's commitment to reduce climate change. The revelations are embarrassing for Lady Ashton, who has faced diplomatic grumblings that she is too low-profile to make an impact on the world stage. She was appointed as part of an extraordinary stitch-up in 2009, which saw equally obscure Belgian Herman van Rompuy appointed as the EU's first president, after EU leaders rejected more high-profile figures who might steal their thunder. The two jobs were both created by the Lisbon Treaty. Critics claim say both are a waste of money. Lady Ashton has faced diplomatic grumblings that she is too low-profile to make an impact on the world stage The new figures reveal that the EEAS has 484 drivers operating out of 141 EU "embassies" around the world as well as Brussels. The highest-paid driver works in Geneva. Lady Ashton said the EEAS had had to buy several bulletproof cars for use in danger zones, which accounted for the decision to spend £182,000 on a single vehicle. She said the highest sum spent on a non-armoured vehicle was £42,000. A Brussels source said EU diplomats frequently asked their chauffeurs to travel vast distances to collect them when they travelled by plane. The source added: "You get cases where an official in Ankara will fly to Istanbul and get their driver to travel ahead so they can pick them up and ferry them around. It doesn't seem to matter that the chauffeur is driving miles with no-one on board. A Commission spokesman said the £62,000 salary was "at the extreme end of the scale." He said the average salary was closer to £10,000.