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Ministry of Justice: Charter Flights

The MOJ holds data for the last three years 2020, 2021 and 2022, however due to the system limitations and internal policies we are unable to break down the amount spent on Ministerial travel as Ministers are not considered employees of the department. They are therefore not required to create accounts and book their own travel which can be monitored through our management reports. Instead, their travel is booked by Private Office employees and logged as guest users.

Furthermore, any flights for prisoners would not show on the MI that they are for a prisoner. We are therefore unable to break down prisoner travel for the same reason as Ministers due to not being employees of the department and not requiring accounts.

The answer given to the question on 4 November 2022 provided the spend on commercial flights by the MOJ, rather than the cost specifically of private charter flights.

The MOJ does not monitor spend on private charter flights, because a very low volume of private charter flights are used. To provide an answer to the cost of private charter flights since 2010 would incur a disproportionate cost. Information for charter flights used by ministers during 2022 has been provided below. Private charter flights are occasionally used for prisoner repatriations and for travel by ministers and senior civil servants when suitable commercial flights are not available.

In respect of the use of charter flights for ministers, during 2022, one private charter flight was used by the Deputy Prime Minister and nine officials for return travel to the Hague at a cost of £22,895. This was disclosed in transparency data at the time.