Liz Truss spent £15,000 of taxpayer money on catering during Australia flight

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Former prime minister Liz Truss spent greater than £15,000 on in-flight catering on a single flight to Australia whereas she was overseas secretary.

As revealed in a freedom of data response to the Labour Party, British taxpayers paid greater than £1,400 per head for 12 authorities officers on a single journey to Australia.

Catering for the Australia flights in January 2022 value £15,639 in whole, which was 3.4 per cent of the full £454,626.59 value of the tickets, Politico reported.

The authorities stated the sums additionally embody wider logistics of operating a non-public aeroplane, corresponding to catering gear, in addition to food and drinks.

A spokesperson for Ms Truss advised The Independent: “Liz had many responsibilities as foreign secretary, but it ought to be self-evident that organising the in-flight catering on overseas trips was not among them.”

Catering for Ms Truss’ South East Asia journey in November 2021 totalled £12,742, which was 4.2 per cent of the general £300,545.39 flight value. Another go to to Indonesia in the summertime of 2022 value £5,604 in in-flight catering, which was £431 per head and 1.5 per cent of the full £369,000 value.

Labour frontbencher Emily Thornberry stated the figures confirmed ministers had been “determined to have their hugely expensive cake and eat it”.

She added politicians had been “booking planes which are for them and them alone, ignoring the burden on the taxpayer, and indifferent to the cost of living crisis facing the rest of the country”.

The Mail on Sunday reported final yr that Ms Truss was contesting a £12,000 authorities invoice referring to her use of the grace-and-favour nation home on the Chevening property that she had entry to as overseas secretary.

Leaked correspondence, revealed by The Sunday Times, disclosed that Ms Truss in 2022 had requested taxpayers’ money for a £3,000 lunch at a non-public membership owned by a Tory donor, overruling her officers’ recommendation to go someplace extra appropriate.

The freedom of data information launched on Thursday additionally confirmed the in-flight catering invoice for Ms Truss’ predecessor Dominic Raab got here to £6,215 during a visit to Indonesia and Brunei in April 2021, and £7,625 for a go to to Singapore, Vietnam and Cambodia in June of that yr.

Meanwhile, catering for flights to Japan, South Korea and Singapore made by Ms Truss’ successor James Cleverly amounted to £14,900 — virtually 4 per cent of the general £384,160 flight value.

A authorities spokesperson stated: “The figures shown represent the end-to-end cost of providing in-flight catering, including transport, on-boarding/off-boarding, preparation, disposal in line with adherence to international waste management regulations, and the required equipment for these processes. These logistical elements make up most of the cost and are charged by the vendor regardless of the specific items ordered or consumed.

“Catering in-flight is a monopoly for the vendor and these costs would also be accrued on scheduled commercial flights. However, they are contained within the wider ‘all-inclusive’ booking fee and not broken down separately.

“Therefore the figures shown should not be conflated as actual expenditure on food or drink. The substantive costs will relate to the transfer of associated catering equipment, in the same way for example that a proportion of the cost of a commercial flight will include charges for the transport of hold luggage (whether itemised or inclusive).”

They added the flight prices are in step with previous precedent for all political events.

Ms Thornberry claimed non-public flights had develop into “the default option for ministers to do their overseas travel”, including: “If they are determined to ignore the ministerial code by opting for government planes when commercial flights are available, the least they should be doing is taking along media or business delegations to help subsidize the cost.”