January 27th - Private Jets And Public Funds

Simon Calder's Independent Travel Podcast

The Independent

Places & Travel, Leisure, Society & Culture

3.6 • 628 Ratings

🗓️ 27 January 2022

⏱️ 7 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Foreign secretary Liz Truss flew by private jet to Australia at a cost of over half-a-million pounds to the taxpayer, rather than using scheduled flights that would have been faster and far cheaper. Instead of travelling from London to Sydney on one of the daily Qantas departures, Ms Truss flew the 22,000 miles to, from and within Australia aboard the private government Airbus A321. The Ministerial Code makes clear that only the foreign secretary could authorise such a flight.

In this episode, I talk about what Truss did, how I uncovered it and who's picking up the tab. (Clue, it's us taxpayers.)

Of course this podcast is completely free, as is my weekly travel email. You can sign up at independent.co.uk/newsletters.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	The future is unpredictable at times, that the open university are the experts in distance learning, allowing you to fit study around your life.
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0:25.3	The Open University. The future is open.
0:33.3	Hello, I'm Simon Calder, welcoming you to my independent travel podcast, bringing you the latest news on travelling, whether you're just dreaming of a great escape, looking forward to one, or actually away, and having the time of your life, perhaps, on a private jet.
0:50.8	Because I have discovered that on the recent 22,000 mile journey by the Foreign Secretary
0:59.9	Liz Truss from London to Sydney to Adelaide and back to London, well, instead of going on the
1:07.7	perfectly reasonable Qantas flights that were going on the same routes
1:14.7	at pretty much the same times, she decided that she would be travelling on the fantastic
1:21.7	Airbus A321 that's operated for the British government. It can see 235 people if it's skitted out like
1:34.4	EasyJet, but it's not. And there were just 14 people on board plus, well at least two sets of
1:41.8	crew because it's a flipping long way.
1:45.2	This cost, if you're a taxpayer, about half a million pounds.
1:49.3	And it also generated half a million kilograms of CO2 on that long and winding journey.
1:59.6	Now, governments like any organisation, big organisation with
2:05.7	complicated patterns of travel, any organisation will, if it can, have some private flying.
2:15.0	If you're not in the city that used to be the World Capital of Aviation, London,
2:22.7	and you want to go to somewhere which isn't served by daily flights, then arguably there's a good
2:30.3	case for using private jets. But the thing is, I have gone through all the timings of the Foreign Secretary's trip.
2:39.1	She could have left London Heathrow, which is much closer to her office in Westminster than Stansted Airport.
2:49.3	She could have left there a couple of hours earlier.
	...

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