Labour has questioned Nigel Farage's claim that a return trip to the Maldives on a private jet linked to a billionaire donor cost as little as £25,000. The Reform UK leader initially recorded the two-day trip as costing £12,500, funded by Thailand-based megadonor Christopher Harborne, before upgrading this to £25,000 in the latest register of interests.
Anna Turley, chair of the Labour Party, wrote to Farage on Thursday arguing that chartering a private jet of a similar size would cost many times more. According to publicly available flight logs, the 11,000-mile round trip lasted just over 23 hours using a plane model currently advertised at at least $11,500 (£8,500) per hour to charter.
Turley highlighted Electoral Commission guidelines stating that goods or services received free of charge must be valued at a comparable market rate. She asked Farage to clarify how he arrived at the £12,500 figure, later amended to £25,000, which she said “bears no relation to the market rate” for equivalent services.
Farage and Reform UK did not respond to requests for comment. Previously, Farage described the trip as a “humanitarian mission” to highlight the plight of the Chagossians, whose families were removed from the islands in the 1960s. He opposes the UK government's decision to hand sovereignty of the islands to Mauritius.
