Netanyahu spent thousands on shoes, hair and make-up

Benjamin Netanyahu has been embarrassed for the second time in a week after it was disclosed his household costs had nearly doubled in four years, including spending rises on shoes and hairdressing.

 While his countrymen are being forced to accept a belt-tightening budget squeeze, Israel's prime minister last year splashed out £593,000 on his three residences – an 80 per cent rise on the £341,000 spent in 2009, the year he took office.

Mr Netanyahu's spendthrift ways were disclosed after a Jerusalem court forced his office to release the 63-year-old prime minster's residence expenses report following a request by the Movement for Freedom of Information, an Israeli group.

It follows revelations that a double-bed had been installed at the cost of £90,000 on a five-hour flight from Tel Aviv to London for Baroness Thatcher's funeral to allow he and his wife Sara, 54, to travel in comfort.

The latest disclosure coincided with his cabinet's approval of a stringent austerity budget, which envisages £4.5 billion of spending cuts by the end of next year along with VAT and income tax rises.

The expenses report details expenditure at Mr Netanyahu's official residence in Balfour Street in Jerusalem's upscale Rahavia district, as well as his private homes in nearby Gaza Street and Caesarea, a plush coastal resort.

Outlays on food and hospitality more than doubled from £39,000 to £88,000 in 2012, while cleaning costs rose from £11,000 to just under £20,000.

Perhaps the most embarrassing increase came under the category of "representation expenses" – defined as wardrobe, shoes, make-up and hair treatment. Here spending virtually doubled to £11,700.

That prompted an unflattering anecdote from Shimon Shiffer, an Israeli commentator writing in Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper.

Mr Shiffer accompanied the prime minister on a helicopter trip to examine a new security fence along Israel's border with Egypt last year. Observing two men on board carrying large bags, Mr Shiffer speculated that they could be holding the keys to Israel's nuclear arsenal – whose existence the country has never publicly acknowledged. They turned out to be the Israeli leader's personal hairdressers.

"The way things worked was that between the staged events by a mock section of the fence where Netanyahu had his picture taken, he was then driven to [a hotel] where he was attended to by the two dedicated hairdressers," Mr Shiffer wrote.

A statement from the prime minister office said the figures included "the expenses for official events held in [Mr Netanyahu's] home and working expenses for the many meetings held there."

The embarrassment was compounded by a separate revelation that 31 people travelled with Mr Netanyahu on a visit to China last week, compared with 18 who accompanied Ehud Olmert, his predecessor, on a similar trip in 2007.

The entourage included two female assistants tasked with attending to the needs of Mr Netanyahu's wife and his two grown-up sons, Yedioth Ahronoth reported.

Earlier this year, the prime minister was forced to cancel a publicly-funded £1,700 contract with a local ice cream parlour after details were reported by the Israeli media.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/israel/10056524/Benjamin-Netanyahu-spent-thousands-on-shoes-hair-and-make-up.html