Badenoch's £8,177 News Corp Athens Trip: Register Entry Explained
Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch has registered £8,177 in travel and accommodation paid by News Corp UK for a meeting with Rupert Murdoch in Greece.
The entry in the MPs' register, the public list where MPs record gifts and outside support, says she travelled to Athens on 24 August with her husband Hamish and shadow minister Alex Burghart, the opposition MP who covers a government brief. News Corp UK is named as the donor. The purpose is given as off-site meetings with Mr K R Murdoch and other senior executives from News Corp and News UK, according to the BBC.
The entry breaks the sum into three parts. It puts an outbound flight from Rome to Athens and a return flight to London for Ms Badenoch and her husband at an estimated £4,000. It puts ground transport and transfers at £1,752.50. It puts accommodation at £2,425.45.
Mr Burghart filed a separate entry for the same visit. He registered £4,088.97 from News Corp UK for flights, accommodation and transport.
The Athens trip included other business. While in the Greek capital in late August 2026, Ms Badenoch met Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis. His office said the two discussed over lunch the close relations between Greece and the United Kingdom and energy, according to the Greek Prime Minister's Office.
This is not the first meeting with Mr Murdoch to attract attention. In October 2023 Ms Badenoch met Mr Murdoch during a trip to New York. She said at the time the talks were not a secret meeting, iNews reported.
That earlier episode was about ministerial transparency, the separate system in which government departments publish ministers' meetings, rather than the MPs' register. The Guardian said Ms Badenoch had held a meeting with Mr Murdoch days after her appointment to the cabinet that she had not declared. A government spokesperson said the failure to publicise the meeting was an 'oversight' by officials, Politico reported.
Separate claims followed in July 2024 about her time in government. Sources said she had asked officials to use taxpayers' money to pay for a holiday flight to the US while in government, and that officials turned down the request, The Guardian reported.
The broader context here is the two disclosure systems working side by side, like two separate logbooks. Ministerial meetings are published by departments in transparency returns. MPs' gifts, hospitality and outside support are recorded in the parliamentary register. The 2023 dispute turned on the first system. The Athens visit turns on the second.
Looking at what this means for Ms Badenoch, Westminster practice applies two tests. The first is compliance, whether the value, donor and purpose have been recorded in full and on time. The second is political, whether an opposition leader accepting funded travel from a major media owner prompts questions about access and influence. On the published detail, the entries set out donor, destination, companions and a cost breakdown. The political argument will now play out as it usually does, with opponents pressing the access point and allies saying such meetings are routine.
