Labour ministers have long-since settled into their business class seats and are in the global jet-set, and now Guido can reveal they are regularly joined by bureaucrats over at Ofgem. Yes, the domestic energy regulator is paying for its staff to fly around the world at your expense…
According to an FOI from the TaxPayers’ Alliance seen by Guido, Ofgem staff managed to rack up a staggering 2,509 flights between April 2022 and March 2025 – that’s more than one flight a day. Not bad for a bunch of pen-pushers whose only remit is in the UK…
Destinations include such exotic regulatory hotspots as Qatar, Sweden, Denmark and Norway – despite there being no plausible reason that Ofgem officials ever need to go abroad in person. Even more absurd, many of the flights were within the UK – jaunts between London and Glasgow, Manchester, the Shetlands, and even Bristol. Ever heard of a train?
UPDATE: An Ofgem spokesperson said:
“We always seek to keep expenditure as low as possible to deliver the best value for money and we regularly review our Business Travel and Expenses Policy in order to minimise the number of flights Ofgem staff take. Our policy is that air travel should only be used where necessary and meets a business need and when travel is required, we follow the government’s procurement rules.”
Speaking to Adam Boulton on Times Radio about kicking the Golders Green suspect, Heidi Alexander said:
“I thought that if I was in the shoes of that police officer, then if I’m honest, given the situation, and the fact that he had a backpack on his back, and they were worried about whether that might go off, I could, if I was a police officer, frankly, I could see myself having taken similar action.”