Rishi Sunak spent over ₹5 crore on private jet trips in less than 15 days

The newly released report by the Cabinet Office document showed details of his overseas travel from October to December 2022. As per the report by Guardian, on 6 November, the prime minister spent about £108,000 which is approximately ₹1 crore on private jet travel for his one day trip to Egypt to attend the Cop27 summit.

Later from 13-17 November 2022, he attended the G20 summit in Bali, Indonesia where his round trip cost more than £340,000 which is approximately ₹3 crore. Later in December, the prime also took a day trip to Latvia and Estonia to attend JEF Summit and HM Forces visit which cost over £62,000 which is approximately ₹62 lakhs. 

It is important to not that this expenditure does not include visas, accommodation, travel, meals of the minister, in fact, as per the document, an additional £20,000 was spent. 

The Guardian report has also stated that all this cost does not include the costs for officials who also went with him on the trips. 

The Liberal Democrats slammed the expenses and said that it is a “shocking waste of taxpayers money” during the cost-of-living crisis. In a tweet, it wrote, “This is a shocking waste of taxpayers’ money at a time when people are struggling to pay their bills. Yet again this Conservative government is completely out of touch.”

The Liberal Democrats’ energy and climate spokesperson Wera Hobhouse also slammed the government and wrote, “This is a shocking waste of taxpayers’ money at a time when people are struggling to pay bills. The Government is completely out of touch. They can pretend to care about a greener future with their so-called ‘Green Day’, but in reality they do not care.”

The prime minister earlier too faced criticism for his lavish lifestyle. Earlier in August, it was reported that he was reportedly spending an approximately ₹3.8 crore ( 400,000 pounds) to construct a luxurious swimming pool inside his mansion. He was criticized as he was spending a gargantuan amount of money to build a swimming pool when UK was facing acute water shortage. Prior to that Sunak in 2001 BBC documentary had talked about his wealthy upbringing and aristocratic connections. He claimed to have upper class and aristocratic friends and had had no “working class” friends.

Meanwhile, Sunak was an investment banker before he turned to politics and rose to become the finance minister of UK. His wife Akshata Murty is the daughter of Infosys founder and billionaire Narayana Murthy. Recently, the UK’s Opposition parties are piling on the pressure on the Prime Minister over a recent Budget policy that could benefit his wife, Akshata Murty, through her business interest in a childcare firm.

Murty is listed as a shareholder in Koru Kids Ltd which is likely to benefit from a new pilot scheme announced in the Spring Budget earlier this month to incentivise people to become childminders. While 10 Downing Street has stated that Sunak had followed the UK’s ministerial code on the matter, the Opposition has called for further explanations.

“There are serious questions for Rishi Sunak to answer over any potential conflict of interest, and any extra income his family could receive from his own government’s policy,” said Liberal Democrat chief whip Wendy Chamberlain, who has called on the Independent Adviser on Ministers’ Interests Sir Laurie Magnus to investigate. First reported by the ‘i’ newspaper, the UK’s Companies House register lists Murty as a shareholder in Koru Kids – one of six childminder agencies in England listed on the government’s website with contact details.

Labour’s Deputy Leader, Angela Rayner, said Sunak must explain why he failed to “come clean” about the shares his family held in a company now set to financially benefit from a childcare policy announced in his Budget, when queried during a parliamentary session of the Liaison Committee earlier this week. Akshata too faced public anger when reports suggested that her assets were more than the Queen of England. It emerged that Murthy had benefited from her “non-domicile” tax status in the UK, shielding her overseas income from taxes at a time when they are rising for most Britons.