THE cost of overseas trips taken by House of Commons Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle has been slammed by the TaxPayers’ Alliance.
Policy analyst Shimeon Lee told GB News: “It’s nice work, if you can get it right? The Speaker is a very plum job. It comes with a very nice apartment in London, £150,000 salary and, as you can see, plenty of opportunities for overseas travel. And of course, the most important detail of all this is that it’s all paid for by taxpayers.
“Now, when you’re in a position like that, I think there’s a responsibility not to take advantage of the generosity of taxpayers. With hundreds of thousands of pounds being spent on these trips, the Caribbean islands, alongside all the other absurd spending that’s been reported, £50,000 on a portrait of himself, £7,000 on mattresses for his official residence, hundreds of pounds on mirrors. I think taxpayers are right to wonder if they’ve been taken for a ride here.
“Everyone else in the country has had to tighten their belts as a result of the government’s tax rises. If you look at air passenger duty, for example, which is set to rise by about 16% in April, you’re going to have families that are going to have to scale back holiday plans because of that.
“I think it’s not right for politicians like the Speaker to enjoy the sort of jet set lifestyle on the back of those taxes.
“There’s absolutely no excuse for this sort of behaviour. This Speaker has spent far more than his predecessor, and in fact, he’s actually changing the rules to try and make his expenses less transparent, so he’s going to go from reporting his expenses every single month to just four times a year.
“I think that’s totally indefensible from someone who’s meant to hold other MPs to the highest standards. It’s quite a coincidence that a lot of these places that he’s visiting are very nice, very nice weather, shall we say. But it obviously has a huge cost to a taxpayer.
“The real issue here is it undermines trust in politics and politicians for the Speaker to be going on these trips regularly.
“The Speaker is supposed to be the one setting an example. He’s supposed to be the one holding MPs to account. So I think the expectations on him are even higher than regular MPs, and how can we possibly, possibly trust him to do this job?
“He’s the one that’s responsible for some of the most extravagant spending. Of course, the culture of any organisation is going to be set at the top right, and if the speaker doesn’t respect taxpayers, then that will filter down to MPs and the whole of the public sector.
“Too often we’ve seen in the public sector this lack of respect for the taxpayer and this lack of respect for where this money is coming from.”
