NORTH-East Hampshire’s MP has been named in a BBC rundown of House of Commons members which accepted the most money to go on foreign trips.

Ranil Jayawardena, MP for North East Hampshire, came in at number five on the list of members of Parliament who had cumulatively accepted the highest value invites in a two-year-period.

In the calendar years either side of the 2017 election that the data looked at, Mr Jayawardena had been on two overseas trips, one to Sri Lanka, and another to Germany.

The donation of the trip to Sri Lanka was to cover a visit to the Asian country in January as part of an All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG), of which Mr Jayawardena is the chair, to participate in a study tour.

The approximate total of this visit came to £15,500, and was donated by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Sri Lanka.

The other donation was for a visit to Berlin in 2017, to participate in a roundtable event hosted by UK Finance and Konrad Adenauer Stiftung. UK Finance donated approximately £1,465 to cover travel costs.

The costs of both of those visits totalled approximately £16,965, which was the amount that placed him on the list.

However, according to the most recent Register of Members’ Financial Interests, Mr Jayawardena also had £12,209.14 worth of trips paid for since June this year.

A spokesperson for Mr Jayawardena, pictured, said: “As one of the Prime Minister’s trade envoys and a member of the House of Commons International Trade Committee, Mr Jayawardena is paying close attention to our future trading relationships and is building bridges with governments and businesses around the world.

“At no cost to the British taxpayer, he led two delegations to Asia this year, and attended a meeting in Germany.

“His foreign visit schedules are always full, and this timely work should not be get clouded out by a report on the BBC, which fails to detail the purpose of these visits and what is achieved through them.”

Mr Jayawardena was one of the nine Conservative MPs to feature in the top ten, with one Labour MP at number seven.

Heading up the list was Aldershot MP Leo Docherty.