I’m a Celebrity Kezia got £70k fee but gave only £5k to charity
Anger after she pockets most of jungle payout
FORMER Scottish Labour leader Kezia Dugdale was paid £70,000 for appearing on I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here! and gave only 7 per cent of it to charity, it has emerged.
The MSP has disclosed her earnings from the ITV reality television show a month after returning from a three-week absence in Australia.
She repeatedly defended her decision to appear on the show by insisting she would give a proportion of her fee to charity.
Yesterday, she confirmed that only £5,100 will be donated to a selection of charities chosen by her staff. In addition, she declared that she received between £10,000 and £15,000 in travel, accommodation and living expenses, paid by ITV.
A spokesman for the Scottish Conservatives said: ‘Kezia Dugdale repeatedly suggested she would give a sizeable portion of her fee to charity – but this is a drop in the ocean.
‘In any other job, an employee going AWOL for the sake of pocketing tens of thousands of pounds would result in immediate dismissal.’
Miss Dugdale was last month issued with a formal warning by Labour leader Richard Leonard for flying out to the jungle without first securing approval.
She argued that appearing on the show, where she sifted through maggots, raw meat, crabs and pungent fish guts, was an opportunity to promote ‘Labour values’. She appeared on screen for only 11 days before being voted off by viewers, but spent three weeks in Australia, staying at the five-star Paldescribed azzo Versace Hotel in Queensland.
Yesterday, Miss Dugdale said: ‘I’m pleased that a number of charities which do amazing work across Scotland will benefit financially from this.
‘I’m delighted to be back in the parliament serving my constituents across the Lothians. I held more than 30 surgeries across the region in 2017 and I will continue to be an open and accessible MSP throughout 2018 and beyond.’
She had already said that she would donate her parliamentary salary for the period of her absence, which totalled £2,500, to the Edinburgh-based charity Rock Trust.
Yesterday, she said £5,100 would be shared between Who Cares? Scotland, Glasgow Women’s Aid and the Archie Foundation.
She paid income tax on her £70,000 fee in both Scotland and Australia, which took her total earnings down to £45,000. She also received a daily subsistence allowance of 150 Australian dollars, equivalent to £86.
A source close to Miss Dugdale the Tory comments as ‘rank hypocrisy’, adding: ‘From Ruth Davidson’s outside earnings of £28,000, including her advance for a book, she hasn’t declared that she has given a single penny to charity.’
In her Holyrood parliamentary register of interests, Miss Dugdale stated: ‘I received a total of between £80,001 and £85,000 in remuneration (which included a fee of £70,000, travel and accommodation and a daily payment whilst not in the camp) from ITV Studios Limited.’
JK Rowling’s charities donated more than £8million in the past year. The Edinburgh-based writer, worth an estimated £650million, is president of the Lumos Foundation, which works to keep children out of orphanages. She also set up the Volant Charitable Trust, which supports such causes as Oxfam and Save the Children.
She has also donated £10million to a multiple sclerosis research centre at Edinburgh University in memory of her mother Anne.
‘This is a drop in the ocean’