Belfast Telegraph: £3,000 a day: that's how much BBC in Northern Ireland spent on flights last year

By Chris Thornton

BBC flights in and out of Belfast cost licence fee payers more than a million pounds last year, the Belfast Telegraph can reveal today.

The Corporation has admitted that it paid for almost 6,000 flights to ferry staff and programme guests in and out of the city - shelling out about £3,000 a day.

Material released to the Belfast Telegraph under the Freedom of Information Act shows BBC flights cost more than £2.7 million in just over four years.

The costs - described as lavish by the Taxpayers Alliance - have been revealed as MPs step up pressure for greater public scrutiny of how the BBC spends the licence fee.

The Corporation has cut its spending on business class flights, but the bill to licence fee payers reached a peak last year, when £1,088,073.98 was spent on 5,930 flights.

That works out to an average of 16 flights a day every day of the year, at an average cost of more than £180.

The Taxpayers Alliance hit out at the spending today, saying licence fee payers' cash should go to programme making rather than "an expensive shuttle service".

Matthew Elliott, the chief executive of the pressure group, said: "Every year the BBC asks for more money from licence fee payers, claiming the extra money will be spent on broadcasting and yet it is lavishing large amounts on costly flights."

"People want their money spent on quality radio and television services, not flying thousands of people to and fro every year.

"The BBC should focus on making use of home-grown talent rather than running an expensive shuttle service around the UK."

In the last half of 2003, almost half the spending on Belfast trips was for business class flights.

But business class spending has dropped considerably since then, accounting for less than 5% of the spending on flights.

The BBC said the spending covers "flights to/from Belfast for both the specific purpose of making programmes and the BBC's commercial subsidiaries along with the data for BBC staff, BBC Trustees, freelancers and programme guests and contributors."

"These figures include not only flights booked by BBC NI staff, but by all areas throughout the BBC," the Corporation said in response to the Telegraph's Freedom of Information request.

"All BBC staff are expected to fly economy. The use of business class travel requires senior management authorisation/review and is only permissible in exceptional circumstances," the BBC said.

"Programme contributors and guests may, on occasion, travel business class."

Westminster's Public Accounts Committee has repeatedly called for greater scrutiny of how the BBC spends the cash provided by licence fee payers.

Currently the National Audit Office can only look at the BBC's books in very limited circumstances approved by the BBC Trust.

Earlier this month, the powerful committee said: "There is still no fully satisfactory regime under which the BBC is accountable to Parliament for the value for money with which it spends licence fee payers' money."

Edward Leigh, the chairman of the committee, said that the BBC is constantly at risk of "failing to secure value for money for the licence fee-payer".

"The BBC's management of that risk would undoubtedly be much the stronger if the NAO were given the same independent rights of access to the Corporation as it enjoys to other bodies funded by the public," he said.