Liz Truss contests ‘£12,000’ invoice regarding her use of grace-and-favour dwelling

Liz Truss is disputing a invoice she has been requested to pay regarding a rustic home which she had use of as overseas secretary.

The invoice is reportedly for £12,000 however the former prime minister’s spokesman claims the precise determine is decrease.

The bill, first reported in The Mail on Sunday, covers the interval in August 2022 when she used Chevening House in Kent, through the time she was working to be Conservative chief earlier than being elected to No 10 the next month.

Ms Truss claims a lot of the bill pertains to utilizing the grace-and-favour dwelling for presidency enterprise and she or he maintains she shouldn’t be liable for almost all of it.

The official enterprise included conferences with cupboard secretary Simon Case once they have been planning a transition to a Truss authorities.

If she did pay, there would have been a breach of civil service protocol as a result of civil servants should not allowed to simply accept hospitality from a politician, her crew argues.

Ms Truss has requested for this half to be billed individually.

She pays for private prices regarding friends. The invoice reportedly consists of lacking objects together with bathrobes, which she is pleased to exchange.

A spokesman for Ms Truss stated: “Liz all the time paid for the prices of her private friends at Chevening.

“The latest invoice contains a mixture of costs for her personally and costs for official government business with civil servants including Simon Case and senior officials from other departments who met at Chevening during the transition preparations.

“The latter constitutes the vast majority of the invoice. It can be inappropriate for her to pay the prices for officers as it will have breached the civil service code for civil servants to simply accept hospitality through the management marketing campaign.

“She has therefore asked for this to be billed separately.”

Chevening House, which has 115 rooms and is Grade 1 listed, was left to the nation by the seventh Earl Stanhope after he died in 1967.

Since then, the prime minister of the day has determined who makes use of it, with that particular person often being the overseas secretary.

Ms Truss was the shortest-serving prime minister in UK historical past, resigning final October, simply 44 days after taking up from Boris Johnson.

It got here after her tax-cutting mini-budget spooked monetary markets.

She has stated she was by no means given a “realistic chance” to implement her radical tax-cutting agenda and blamed what she referred to as a “powerful economic establishment” for eradicating her from Downing Street.