The plane reportedly cost the taxpayer £500k
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Foreign Secretary Liz Truss has reportedly spent £500k of taxpayers money on a private plane to Australia.
It's caused fury among campaigners who have accused Ms Truss of exuding "shocking privilege" by riding an "outrageous source of carbon emissions".
Ms Truss set off for Australia on January 18 at midday from London Stansted Airport.
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The private journey had two pilots, according to flight data, with one 90-minute stop at Dubai and another at Kuala Lumpar the Mirror reports.
She arrived in Sydney just after midnight on January 20 with her journey being catalogued by a taxpayer-funded PR photographer.
Had the Foreign Secretary of chosen to business first class on Qantas Airways, she could have arrived down under five hours earlier.
She also would not have spent as many carbon emissions because the flight from London would have taken her direct from London Heathrow to Adelaide, Australia.
An aviation source told the Independent the cost of operating Ms Truss’s trip would have been “at least £500,000”, while the most expensive business-class tickets which also offers lie-flat beds would have cost just over £7,700.
A Foreign Office source told the Mirror Ms Truss needed to fly privately so she can work securely and have the flexibility to set off to another destination in the event of a crisis in another region, such as Eastern Europe.
Labour's Deputy Leader Angela Rayner said: "Liz Truss shows the public exactly quite how little respect this Conservative Government has for taxpayers' money with her ridiculous waste of half a million pounds on a private jet trip.
"It is obscene that Government Ministers are jet setting yet are hiking taxes and refusing to do anything to help working families when they are feeling the pinch of the cost of living crisis.
Ms Truss defended herself saying "I used the Government plane – that is why we have a Government plane: to enable Government ministers to conduct Government business, and that's what I flew to Australia in."
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Pressed on whether it would have been better to have used commercial flights instead, the Cabinet minister said: "Every Government decision is based on value for money.
"We have a Government plane specifically so ministers, like me in my role as Foreign Secretary, can go and do the work overseas, which is ultimately delivering for the British people."
Ms Truss used the private Airbus A321 to, from and around Australia, the newspaper said.
It has luxury interiors including spacious soft cream-coloured seats that fold into lie-flat beds.
The plane could seat around 200 people without luxury configuration, and even with luxury seats fits scores of passengers. The Foreign Office has not said how many people were in Ms Truss' delegation.
Emblazoned with the Union flag and the words United Kingdom, it is thought to be a privately-owned plane that is regularly leased to the government for official journeys.
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The same aircraft rushed Boris Johnson back from the COP26 summit in Glasgow to London in November, in what Labour branded “staggering hypocrisy”.
At the time, No10 insisted it was "one of the most carbon efficient planes of its size in the world”, producing 50% less CO2 than the government’s main Voyager plane.
It runs on a “blend of 35% sustainable aviation fuel and 65% normal fuel, which is the maximum amount allowed and obviously the emissions will be offset”, No10 claimed in November.
Reports claim Ms Truss spent two days meeting government officials in Australia before flying across to Adelaide where she gave a speech.
She left Adelaide at 10.50pm on January 22 according to Flightradar24, with her plane once again refuelling at Kuala Lumpur and Dubai.
Ms Truss’s plane arrived back at Stansted airport at 1320 on January 23.
A Foreign Office spokesperson said: “It’s necessary for the foreign secretary to travel abroad to pursue UK interests around security, trade and technology, as she did during this visit to Australia.
SNP Environment spokesperson Deidre Brock MP said: "Yet again, Liz Truss has serious questions to answer over her grotesque misuse of taxpayers' money to fund her jet set lifestyle.
“This trip used government transport and was fully within rules set out in the Ministerial Code.”
"Taxpayers will be appalled that the Tory Foreign Secretary has reportedly wasted over half a million pounds of our money on a luxury private jet trip – and emitted tonnes of unnecessary carbon emissions during a climate crisis.
"Ms Truss has a history of frittering away public funds. Only recently, she was criticised for splashing out over a thousand pounds on a single lunch, which saw her quaffing high-end wines in a Mayfair private members club owned by a Tory donor.
"With a record like this, Lavish Liz will make a fitting successor to Boris Johnson.”
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