Auditor General's Hefty Expenses Bill

Sir John Bourn, guardian of the public purse. In three years he's run up bills of £365k on travel and £27k on meals. Then there's opera, grand prix, polo ...

As England's chief investigator into Whitehall waste and extravagance, Sir John Bourn, the comptroller and auditor general, monitors billions of pounds of government expenditure and private contracts from business to run state services every year.

Yet over the past few months Sir John's own expenditure on foreign travel and entertaining, paid by the taxpayer, has come under increasing scrutiny after criticism that he was taking first class air travel for himself and Lady Bourn and dining out regularly in London.