Speaker splurges £180k on luxury trips

Is Lindsay Hoyle turning into John Bercow? Mr S first asked the question in January after revealing that the Speakers’ Office had doubled in size on Hoyle’s watch. And now other outlets are running with the same theme, by looking at the Speaker’s trips abroad. It seems the man of the people rather enjoys the high life, spending £180,000 of taxpayers’ money on top-end flights, luxury hotels and chauffeur-driven cars. Talk about putting that ‘order order’ in, eh?

‘Long-Haul Hoyle’ splashed the cash on £900-a-night hotels, first-class flights and even a private plane trip to the British Overseas Territory of Montserrat, according to Freedom of Information responses by the Daily Mail. The paper reports that since 2022 Hoyle has treated himself to 19 foreign visits – setting a new record for Speaker trips in a given time frame. While the veteran parliamentarian could have opted to fly economy – when he made short trips to Dublin or Western Europe, for example – Hoyle decided not to.