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Prime Minister Rishi Sunak spent over £1.4 million of taxpayers’ money on foreign air travel using private planes between taking office on 25 October 2022 and 31 December 2023, according to the Government’s most recent figures.
That total of £1,409,961 spent on official trips to places like Rome, Dubai and Washington includes over £1,284,000 on a UK Government-funded Airbus A321 aircraft and over £125,000 for RAF transport.
The Government has declined to release official costs of any of the Prime Minister’s UK flights on private taxpayer-funded aircraft, citing reasons of national security. But figures are available for some of Sunak’s UK air travel paid for by Conservative donors. They reveal that in the eight months from April to November 2023 Conservative benefactors gave over £101,000 to provide private plane and helicopter trips within the UK, often when Sunak was on party business.
Sunak appears to be the real frequent-flyer amongst recent Conservative Prime Ministers. Figures are only available for his first six months (187 days) in office between October 2022 and April 2023, and they show that he took a total of 23 domestic flights on aircraft provided by the RAF at public expense, an average of one every eight days. That compares with Liz Truss, who took an average of one flight every 12 days in her short time as Prime Minister, Boris Johnson who took one flight every 20 days, although his travel was restricted by Covid, and Theresa May who took one flight for every 13 days of her Premiership.
The Cabinet Office declined to update those figures for Sunak’s private air journeys since April 2023, citing national security.
The number and frequency of publicly-funded air journeys since Sunak became Prime Minister in October 2022 has raised questions about the amount of money spent, the environmental impact, and his apparent reluctance to consider alternative public transport options. The numerous donor-funded trips have raised additional questions, especially since it has emerged that some of the benefactors have been awarded significant Government contracts, while others have been the subject of public controversy.
Flights of Fancy and Concern
One of Sunak’s taxpayer-funded domestic flights was to his home town of Southampton on 8 May 2023, where he visited a local pharmacy to launch a new scheme to free up GP appointments by allowing pharmacists to write prescriptions for common illnesses. His decision to take a helicopter meant a cost to the public purse of thousands of pounds for a journey that could have taken less than 90 minutes on the train and cost around £120 return, even for a first-class ticket.
Jetting around the country on taxpayers’ money like an A-list celeb
Labour on Sunak’s frequent flying
Government records describe the official subject of the visit as “health,” but there was slightly more to it than that. Sunak was widely reported to have told receptionists at the pharmacy that he was going to visit his family in Southampton later. The government’s own records tend to support this, since they show that he made further health-related constituency visits in the Southampton area the following day.
At the time, Labour accused the Prime Minister of “jetting around the country on taxpayers’ money like an A-list celeb … No politician should be above using public transport to get around the country – especially for a journey that would take little more than an hour.” Downing St officials responded that, “obviously, there’s a lot of pressure on his time … so sometimes being able to get to and from places quickly is the best use of his time.”
Other private flights have caused even more concern. On 19 January 2023, Sunak used an official RAF plane to visit three different constituencies in one day. In the first, Bexleyheath and Crayford in Kent, the subject was listed in official records as “police”. Then there was a quick stop-over in Morecambe to celebrate the awarding of £50 million in levelling-up funding for a new Eden project. Finally, he dropped in on Hartlepool to inspect the new Northern Film and TV studios which were being opened as part of a further £17 million levelling-up investment.
When challenged by the press about his decision to ignore public transport in favour of private air travel Sunak responded airily, saying: “I travel around so I can do lots of things in one day, I’m not travelling around just for my own enjoyment.” Then, perhaps realising the potential for that off-the-cuff defence to land badly with the people of down-at-heel Morecambe, he hastily added, “although this is very enjoyable, of course.”
But the locations he chose were also of great significance in party-political terms. Two of the visits offered a chance to highlight the Government’s much-criticised levelling-up policy, and all are key constituencies in the current election campaign. Bexleyheath and Morecambe are both the kind of marginal Conservative seats that Sunak will have to work hard to defend against Labour’s persistent national poll lead. Hartlepool was only captured from Labour in a by-election in 2021 and is now a key Opposition target.
Private plane trips like these have also raised concerns about Sunak’s commitment to net zero. This, after all, is a government that, for all its weakening of recent climate change commitments, still says it intends to hit net zero by 2050.
Has seemingly abandoned the government’s environmental responsibilities while throwing taxpayer money away so he can travel in luxury
Labour on Sunak
A report by the green think-tank Transport and Environment in May 2021 found that private aircraft are up to 14 times more polluting per passenger than commercial flights, and around 50 times more polluting than trains.
Labour argues that the Prime Minister “has seemingly abandoned the government’s environmental responsibilities while throwing taxpaye