Fury at Arlene’s £20,000 f light home (on top of £1bn DUP deal)

DUP LEADER Arlene Foster has already landed British PM Theresa May in hot water – after details emerged of a £20,000 RAF flight she took back to Belfast.

The British premier arranged for Foster to be flown back to Belfast in the military aircraft as a favour after she signed last week’s £1bn deal to back the Tories in crunch Commons votes. But the Conservative Party was forced to pick up the tab for the flight after Downing Street was warned that UK anticorruption rules ban ministers from charging the taxpayer for political activities.

The flights, including the return journey by the pilot, cost an average of £7,000 an hour – compared with tickets starting at £41 for any of the 38 commercial flights that run between London and Belfast.

Asked to comment on the RAF flight, the DUP’s Jeffrey Donaldson

RAF flight ‘is a shoddy bung’

said: ‘Arlene flew British Airways on the way to London, I don’t know how she flew back.’

A DUP spokesman did not respond to further requests for comment.

Last night British Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn called the RAF flight a ‘shoddy bung’.

Mr Corbyn said: ‘Theresa May has already given an extra £1bn to Northern Ireland to hang on to power and now it appears she gave a free RAF flight to Arlene Foster to seal the deal.

‘This is a shoddy bung to shore up a Government that has lost its mandate. The Conservatives must come clean. Did they try and make the taxpayer foot the bill for this flight and how often does the Tory Party book RAF flights?’

A Conservative Party spokesman denied any wrongdoing and said the aircraft was provided so Ms Foster could return to local Ulster negotiations with the nationalists at the Stormont assembly.

After 18 days of post-election wrangling, Ms Foster promised that the DUP’s MPs will support the Tories in major Commons votes in return for policy concessions and an extra £1bn for the province.