The in-flight catering for James Cleverly’s one-day round trip to Rwanda last December, while he was home secretary, cost £655 a head.
Cleverly spent £165,561 chartering a private jet for his 11-hour visit to Kigali to sign Rishi Sunak’s deportation deal after the supreme court’s finding that Rwanda was an “unsafe country”.
He travelled to Kigali with officials and a TV crew on 4 December and signed the new legally binding treaty alongside Rwanda’s foreign affairs minister, Vincent Biruta.
It can now be revealed that the catering for the eight-and-a-half hour return flight for Cleverly and his 14 officials cost £9,803.20, or £653.55 a head, according to a freedom of information response given to the Labour party. The TV crew paid for their own food.
Government officials said the catering bill includes the transportation costs of cooking equipment, which would also be accrued on a scheduled commercial flight, as well as the food and drink.
Cleverly, now the shadow home secretary, also spent £22,324.50, or £1,488.30 a head, on in-flight catering while travelling to Japan, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, New Zealand and Indonesia in July 2023.
The full cost of the flights to the five countries for Cleverly, then the foreign secretary, and his 14-person entourage was £561,531.04, according to the FoI request concerning ministerial trips on the government’s Airbus A321 jet.
Meanwhile, Cleverly’s successor in the Foreign Office, David Cameron, incurred a catering bill of £20,809, or £1,095.21 a head, when visiting the Falkland Islands, Paraguay, Brazil and New York in February 2024. The total cost of those flights for Cameron and 18 officials was £470,275.43.
The former prime minister Boris Johnson and his eight-person entourage spent £2,210, or £245.55 a head, on in-flight catering when attending the funeral of the UAE president, Sheikh Khalifa, in May 2022. The flight cost £125,949.
The data released by the Cabinet Office includes details of eight ministerial journeys taken between May 2022 and February 2024 in which journalists from all major news outlets were not onboard. The costs are for the ministers and their officials alone. The Guardian accompanied Cleverly on his trip to Japan, but covered its own costs and, as such, does not appear as part of the bill.
Cleverly, while foreign secretary, also spent £807.77 a head on in-flight catering on a trip to India in October 2022; £845.16 a head on a trip to Bahrain and Qatar in November 2022; £737.18 a head on a trip to Indonesia in July 2023; and £1,020.51 a head on a three-stop trip to the US also in July 2023.
A Labour source said: “We should never forget that, despite spending £700m on the Rwanda scheme – including James Cleverly’s flight to Kigali – the Tories did not stop one small boat or deport one single person as a result of that scheme.
“On the contrary, 84,000 people crossed the Channel from the day the scheme was introduced to the day it was scrapped, and the only people who ended up in Rwanda were four volunteers.
“The Tories delivered literally nothing back to the British taxpayer in return for all the millions spent on this scheme, but at least James Cleverly got some nice in-flight meals out of it.”
The Guardian contacted the Home Office and the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office for comment.
