Civil Service Credit Cards

BBC reporting today that most current CS credit cards are being cancelled, with stricter rules for reapplying for them. Citing a four-fold increase in spending and lots of 'waste'.

These sorts of cards have been around since I originally joined the CS in 2004. And I thought that they were just a way of paying for legitimate spending without the upfront admin/delay. You still have to get all the spending approved through the normal processes, it's not like you can just take the card down your local strip club and face no consequences? It's purely about efficiency and having some trust in the card owner.

The BBC highlights a few seemingly ridiculous purchases, but I'm assuming that these are the absolute edge cases and that they would happen with or without a CS credit card?

Any thoughts for someone with more knowledge of this?