FOI Reveals Mayor Kim McGuinness’ trip to Japan weeks before Christmas cost taxpayers over £16,000

Last updated on December 21, 2025

In November 2025, a member of the public, Jamie Halliday, submitted a Freedom of Information request about the North East Mayor’s overseas trip to Japan. The request was made via WhatDoTheyKnow and can be read here: Overseas trip to Japan by the North East Mayor FOI .

The request asked a simple set of questions about the Mayor’s visit to Tokyo, publicly presented as a mission to secure “two new deals” for greener public transport and “200 new green energy jobs”. Who went, what it cost, who paid, what policies applied, and what business case or climate assessment was recorded before putting three senior people on a long haul flight a month before Christmas.

NECA have now replied. The response confirms a total spend of around £16,000 of devolved public money for three people. It also repeats a phrase that appears in some of the most important places: “Information not held.”

What NECA say the Japan trip cost

According to the FOI response, the Mayor travelled with the Executive Director for Economic Growth, Investment and Culture and the Head of Mayoral Delivery. All travel took place between 13 and 24 November 2025, with Tokyo listed as the city visited. The response itself can be read in full here: NECA FOI response on Japan trip .

The costs disclosed are:

• Flights: £9,536.21 for all three attendees, using different airlines, in premium economy or economy.
• Rail: £12.59.
• Local transport: £232.96 on metros, taxis and transfers.
• Hotels: £6,025.31 across three hotels for the duration of the trip.
• Translator: £300.
• Meals and refreshments: £122.85.

In total, this comes to roughly £16,229. The costs were charged to:

• 91B101 Mayor’s Office
• 91X090 Mayor
• 91L001 Director Staffing

NECA confirm that the trip was funded from devolved money provided to the Combined Authority to deliver its policy objectives.

Hotel spend that does not look frugal

The hotel line alone raises eyebrows. A total of £6,025.31 for three people over around ten or eleven nights in Tokyo works out at roughly £180 to £200 per room per night.

That is not ultra luxury, but it is firmly in the comfortable business bracket, not the kind of careful, stripped back spending most residents would recognise from their own lives. When the trip is promoted as a green milestone, and the region is living through a cost of living crisis, it is hard to argue that this looks particularly restrained.

A broad corporate tour behind a narrow “green” message

The FOI response lists meetings with the following organisations:

• UK Embassy
• Warner
• Universal
• Createch
• Konami
• Hitachi
• North Standard
• NSK
• Tokyo Gas
• Rise A
• FLOWRA
• Nissan

This looks less like a single purpose trip about buses and more like a wider corporate and investment roadshow, covering media, gaming, energy and automotive interests. There is nothing inherently wrong with a Mayor promoting the North East in that way. The issue is the gap between that reality and the simple public slogan about “greener public transport and 200 green energy jobs from Japan”.

If you are going to fly three senior people halfway around the world for nearly eleven days, the public are entitled to see a clear explanation of what was done, why it needed to be done in person and how the spend was justified against other priorities.

Where the paperwork disappears: “Information not held”

The most revealing part of the FOI response is not the cost but what NECA say does not exist. When asked for:

• any business case, briefing paper, decision report or approval form authorising the trip,
• any written assessment of why physical attendance in Japan was necessary,
• any record that alternatives such as Hitachi’s UK operations, hybrid meetings or video conferencing were considered,
• any assessment of value for money,
• any assessment of reputational or political risk for a long haul trip tied to green announcements,

NECA’s answer is identical in each case: “Information not held.”

For climate and carbon questions, the same phrase appears again. NECA state that they hold no information on:

• any estimate or calculation of greenhouse gas emissions for the trip,
• the methodology that would have been used to calculate emissions,
• any record of carbon offsetting or a decision not to offset,
• any specific policy or guidance requiring senior politicians to minimise or justify overseas flights in light of climate goals.

If that is accurate, then a trip costing more than £16,000 of public money, heavily marketed as part of a green agenda, took place with no recorded business case, no written value for money reasoning, no documented consideration of cheaper or lower carbon alternatives and no climate impact assessment at all.

The policies that make this even more uncomfortable

In response to questions about the rules that applied at the time, NECA did attach its Travel and Expenses Guidance Policy and its Environmental Operational Sustainability Policy .

On paper, these sound reassuring. The travel policy talks about promoting cost effective travel, using the most economical fares, and choosing the most cost effective and sustainable method of transport. Staff are told to consider video conferencing and other remote options before they book travel.

The environmental policy talks about probity, lawfulness and leadership by example, and commits the organisation to reducing emissions from business activity, including travel.

Read those side by side with the FOI response and the contradiction is obvious:

• Travel policy says consider not travelling and use remote meetings where possible, yet NECA say they hold no record that anyone considered not flying three people to Tokyo.
• Policies talk about cost effective and sustainable travel, yet there is no written value for money assessment for a £16k long haul visit.
• Environmental policy commits to reducing emissions, yet there is no recorded carbon calculation for a trip that involved multiple flights and nearly eleven days abroad.

When policies exist on paper but vanish in practice as soon as something high profile and politically attractive is on the table, it is hard to argue that those policies are doing any real work.

Gifts, hospitality and partial disclosure

On third party funding, NECA state that Hitachi did not pay for flights or accommodation. They confirm one meal with Hitachi colleagues, estimated at £100 per person for all three attendees after an MOU signing. They refer readers to the Mayor’s gifts and hospitality register.

What is not fully clear from the response is whether the Executive Director and Head of Mayoral Delivery have their own hospitality records, whether those were searched and whether there are any entries connected to this trip. That lack of clarity will probably need to be tested in the internal review process.

Why this FOI matters for public trust

This FOI by Jamie Halliday is not about nitpicking receipts for the sake of it. It goes to the heart of how a Combined Authority should handle expensive, high carbon, politically visible travel that is then sold to residents as a green achievement.

People in the North East are already being asked to change their behaviour for the climate, accept higher costs and live with cuts elsewhere. In that context, sending three senior figures on a long haul trip to Tokyo a month before Christmas, spending around £16,000 of devolved money, and then claiming there is no recorded business case or climate assessment, does not sit well.

Policies that sound impressive on a PDF but disappear the moment a photo opportunity appears are not climate leadership. They are branding.

Internal review and what comes next

An internal review of NECA’s response has now been requested. That review asks the authority to:

• explain what searches have actually been carried out for business cases, approvals and emissions assessments,
• clarify whether relevant emails, briefing notes or calendar entries exist at all,
• revisit the repeated use of “information not held” where it is implausible that no records exist,
• and properly consider the environmental aspects of the request under the Environmental Information Regulations.

Whatever NECA do next, the FOI has already done something important. It has turned a one minute “green” video from Tokyo into a public, searchable record of how the trip was funded, what it cost and how little appears to have been written down to justify it.

Related reading on The Reasonable Adjustment

• High Viz Kim’s Tokyo Trip: the carbon cost and the missing transparency
• NECA Subject Access Request Chaos: what a single PDF revealed about their data handling

Together, these pieces raise a simple question for anyone watching public life in the North East. When councils and combined authorities talk about climate, accountability and modern governance, are they describing how they actually behave, or how they would like us to imagine they behave.