The public register now records that Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch received gifts worth £8,177 from News Corp UK to cover travel and accommodation for a meeting with Rupert Murdoch in Athens. The entry makes the trip and its cost part of MPs' official financial disclosures.
Badenoch, her husband Hamish, and Conservative shadow minister Alex Burghart flew to Athens on 24 August, with the Murdoch family’s company meeting the costs, the register shows. Badenoch described the purpose of the trip as off-site meetings with Mr K R Murdoch and senior News Corp and News UK executives.
Her entry breaks the total down as an estimated £4,000 for an outbound flight from Rome to Athens and a return flight to London, £1,752.50 for ground transportation and transfers, and £2,425.45 for accommodation. The register obliges MPs to declare gifts above £300 within 28 days, and Badenoch’s entry appears in the latest published list of members’ financial interests.
A spokesperson for Badenoch said she welcomed the opportunity to meet Rupert Murdoch and senior executives at News Corp and News UK, confirmed the trip had been declared and said she values engagement with Britain’s major media organisations, including the BBC, while arguing for a free and independent press.
Alex Burghart, who attended the Athens meetings, has lodged a separate entry listing a gift worth £4,088.97 to cover his flights, accommodation and local transport.
The visit followed a meeting Badenoch held with Italian Prime Minister Georgia Meloni in Italy. It is not her first engagement with the Murdoch group: she met Rupert Murdoch and News Corp executives in 2022 when she served as international trade minister. Rupert Murdoch stepped down as News Corp chair in 2023 and became chairman emeritus, with his son Lachlan taking the chair. The company owns UK outlets including Virgin Radio, TalkSPORT, the Sun and the Times.
News Corp’s titles have shifted political endorsements over the decades, backing the Conservatives in the 1980s and early 1990s, moving to Labour in 1997, and returning to the Conservatives in 2010. In 2024 the Times, the Sunday Times and the Sun endorsed Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour Party. The latest register also records other entries, including three Everton directors’ lounge tickets worth £677.34 declared by Prime Minister Andy Burnham.
With the Athens trip now recorded in the register, the financial disclosure makes the meeting and the cost of travel and lodging a matter of public record under parliamentary transparency rules.
