Liz Truss is disputing a invoice she has been requested to pay referring to a rustic home which she had use of as international secretary.
The invoice is reportedly for £12,000 however the former prime minister’s spokesman claims the precise determine is decrease.
The bill, first reported in The Mail on Sunday, covers the interval in August 2022 when she used Chevening House in Kent, in the course of the time she was operating to be Conservative chief earlier than being elected to No 10 the next month.
Ms Truss claims a lot of the bill pertains to utilizing the grace-and-favour residence for presidency enterprise and he or she maintains she shouldn’t be liable for almost all of it.
The official enterprise included conferences with cupboard secretary Simon Case after they had been planning a transition to a Truss authorities.
If she did pay, there would have been a breach of civil service protocol as a result of civil servants aren’t allowed to just accept hospitality from a politician, her crew argues.
Ms Truss has requested for this half to be billed individually.
She pays for private prices referring to visitors. The invoice reportedly consists of lacking objects together with bathrobes, which she is joyful to interchange.
A spokesman for Ms Truss stated: “Liz at all times paid for the prices of her private visitors at Chevening.
“The latest invoice contains a mixture of costs for her personally and costs for official government business with civil servants including Simon Case and senior officials from other departments who met at Chevening during the transition preparations.
“The latter constitutes the vast majority of the invoice. It could be inappropriate for her to pay the prices for officers as it will have breached the civil service code for civil servants to just accept hospitality in the course of the management marketing campaign.
“She has therefore asked for this to be billed separately.”
Chevening House, which has 115 rooms and is Grade 1 listed, was left to the nation by the seventh Earl Stanhope after he died in 1967.
Since then, the prime minister of the day has determined who makes use of it, with that particular person often being the international secretary.
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Liz Truss’s rise and fall
Ms Truss was the shortest-serving prime minister in UK historical past, resigning final October, simply 44 days after taking on from Boris Johnson.
It got here after her tax-cutting mini-budget spooked monetary markets.
She has stated she was by no means given a “realistic chance” to implement her radical tax-cutting agenda and blamed what she referred to as a “powerful economic establishment” for eradicating her from Downing Street.
Source: information.sky.com”
