Boris Johnson 'still hasn't paid' for a slap-up dinner he took a private jet to attend, it has been claimed.
The Prime Minister faced a combination of fury and ridicule after he travelled 400 miles by private jet from the Glasgow COP26 climate conference in order to dine at the members-only Garrick club in London.
The event was a reunion dinner for Daily Telegraph journalists, where Mr Johnson was formerly employed as a £250,000 a year columnist, a sum he once described as "chicken feed".
But it’s claimed the Prime Minister has yet to pay his bill for the meal - nor for the meals eaten by his security detail.
According to a column in the Oldie, written by the dinner’s organiser Stephen Glover - and reported in today’s Times - Mr Johnson is the only guest yet to pay his share of the bill.
Mr Glover wrote: “I might add that Boris Johnson is the only guest who has not paid his share, and that three of his police bodyguards wolfed sirloin steaks at my expense.”
Number 10 has been approached for comment.
Defending the private jet flight at the time of the dinner, last November, a Number 10 spokesperson said: “It is important that the Prime Minister is able to move around the country and we have obviously faced significant time restraints.”
They added: “All travel decisions are made with consideration for security and time restraints.
"The Prime Minister returned on Tuesday night from four days of engagements in Rome and Glasgow, ahead of updating Parliament on the important commitments secured both at the G20 and COP26.
“The Prime Minister travelled on one of the most carbon efficient planes of its size in the world, using the most sustainable aviation fuel possible.
"The UK will be offsetting all carbon emissions associated with running COP26 including travel.”
Mr Johnson was photographed leaving the dinner with Tory peer and climate change sceptic Lord Moore.
Lord Moore had just days earlier written a piece in the Telegraph defending his friend Owen Paterson over his paid second “advisory” jobs.
Mr Patterson eventually resigned, but not before Mr Johnson engineered a chaotic and doomed bid to have his Commons suspension thrown out.
There had been claims following the meeting that Lord Moore had lobbied the Prime Minister to protect Mr Paterson during the Garrick dinner.
But Mr Glover wrote that he had not.
“Moore, whom I have known for more than 40 years, though he could scarcely be described as a friend, is my chief witness,” he wrote.
“I do not believe that he would lie to me. He says he did not at any stage during the dinner attempt to persuade the Prime Minister of the rightness of Paterson’s cause, and no conversation on the matter took place.”
Lord Moore, he said, further claimed he knew when he arrived at the dinner that the Government was already committed to defending Mr Paterson, and had “briefly told the Prime Minister of his pleasure at this development when he saw him at the Garrick.”
