Liz Truss spent £369,000 of taxpayers’ money on a trip to Bali which she ended up cutting short to launch her Tory leadership bid, HuffPost UK can reveal.
Official data released by the government shows the huge cost to the public purse of the then foreign secretary hiring the government’s official plane to attend a meeting of G20 foreign ministers in Indonesia.
But she spent less than 24 hours in the country after Boris Johnson announced he was resigning while she was out of the country.
Truss then flew back to London to drum up support for her successful bid to succeed him as prime minister.
She landed in Bali at 12.41pm local time on July 7 and took off again at 8.52am the following day.
That means the total cost the taxpayer was £18,450 for every hour she spent on the ground.
Shadow attorney general Emily Thornberry said: “What more evidence do we need of the grotesque waste that has become endemic under this Tory government, what more evidence do we need that all they care about is advancing their own career prospects, rather than fulfilling their responsibilities to our country?”
Although she ended up defeating Rishi Sunak in the Tory leadership contest, Truss was forced to resign as PM after just 44 days following her disastrous mini-budget.