Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how much his Department has spent on business class flights since May 2010.

The Department books the following classes of flights; economy, premium economy, and business class. Economy class is the default booking and an approved business case is required to book business class. If a flight is upgraded free of charge to business class, a business case is not required, although the management information will record a business class flight was taken. The total amount spent on business class flights is £470,038 from May 2010 to 31 March 2014. In comparison equivalent spend between 2005 and 2010 was £2,828,263.

This represents a reduction of £2,358,225 on the previous five years’ spend.