Premier André Ebanks MP took to the dance floor at the Cayman Islands Government's Cayman Day party in London last November, and the office that stages the event has not said what that night cost, although its hospitality register, released to The Caymanian Journal (TCJ) under the Freedom of Information Act, puts five Cayman Day celebrations since 2021 at £84,911.

Footage of the evening at 8 Northumberland Avenue, a venue off Trafalgar Square, posted on the Cayman Islands Government Office UK's social media, shows the Premier telling the crowd: "We will keep pushing to make Cayman better at home, you continue to keep making us proud overseas. God bless us all, let us enjoy this evening." DJ Zeeky then announced that the Premier was "going to break all protocol tonight, he's going to get on the dance floor", and Sound Vibez asked the room: "Anybody ever danced to Candy with your Premier?" The Premier and the Representative, Dr Tasha Ebanks Garcia, are then seen dancing.

Photographs of the evening also show Attorney General Samuel Bulgin, Opposition Leader Joseph Hew MP, Deputy Speaker Pearlina McGaw-Lumsden MP, Finance Minister Rolston Anglin MP, Health Minister Katherine Ebanks-Wilks MP, Planning Minister Jay Ebanks MP, Parliamentary Secretary Julie Hunter MP and Christopher Saunders MP among the guests.

The celebration, on Saturday 29 November 2025, came at the end of the week of the UK Overseas Territories' Joint Ministerial Council in London. The government announced on 24 November that the Premier would lead a delegation to the Council from 24 to 28 November made up of Finance Minister Rolston Anglin MP, Health Minister Katherine Ebanks-Wilks MP, Planning Minister Jay Ebanks MP, Parliamentary Secretary Julie Hunter MP and Attorney General Samuel Bulgin, and that "following JMC, on 29 November delegation members will attend Cayman Day". The official travel register released with the hospitality register says the Representative attended the Council "to support the Official Delegation which included Premier, Ministers of Government and others". The Portfolio of Legal Affairs told TCJ the Attorney General's airfare, accommodation and per diem for that period were met by the Portfolio, and that his visit for the Council "coincided with the Cayman Day celebrations". Opposition Leader Joseph Hew MP said he had been invited by the Ministry of Planning. The other ministries and offices asked had not said who met their members' costs by the time of publication, and none of that spending appears in the London office's figures.

What the party cost

The hospitality register, which the Cabinet Office released on 15 October with five other records in response to a request TCJ sent by email on 17 August, lists 135 entries totalling £264,254.60 between 1 January 2020 and 17 August 2026. There was no Cayman Day in 2020: the office's own account of the first post-COVID celebration, on 18 September 2021, says Caymanians in the UK came together "for the first time in 18 months since the early COVID lockdown". Five entries since then carry the name Cayman Day, and together they are 32% of everything the office has spent on hospitality in the six years and eight months the register covers.

The entries are £12,679.50 for "Cayman Day 2021", dated 17 September 2021; £24,506.38 for "Cayman Day 2022", dated 17 September 2022; £8,740.45 for "Cayman Day 2023", dated 15 September 2023 and the only one offered in the Deputy Representative's name rather than the Representative's; £11,444.80 for "Cayman Day 2024", dated 12 November 2024; and £27,540 for "Cayman Day 2026", dated 10 April 2026 and offered by the Representative to "Caymanians in the UK and friends of Cayman". The register's 2025 sheet, which runs to 16 entries totalling £9,598.26, carries no Cayman Day line, so the record does not say what the 29 November 2025 party cost. TCJ asked the Cabinet Office and the London office to confirm whether the £27,540 entry relates to the 29 November 2025 event. On 28 October, the day of TCJ's deadline, Dr Ebanks Garcia replied that the office had "been occupied with other pressing matters and would appreciate an extension to the deadline to allow us additional time to respond to your enquiry". A representative of the Cabinet Office had acknowledged a request on 27 October. No answer had been received by the time of publication.

The office's website describes the 2025 evening, from 4pm to 9pm, under the theme "Under the Red Sky", with the band Heat, storyteller Nasaria Suckoo-Chollette and steel-pan player Michael Lemay. The venue, 8 Northumberland Avenue, calls itself "London's most central venue" and hires out its 19th-century Ballroom and Old Billiard Room for conferences, dinners, awards and receptions, with hire packages that include catering, security, staffing and audio-visual equipment; it does not publish prices. Registration for the next Cayman Day, on Saturday 28 November 2026 at the same venue, opened this month. The office's listing says it is "a FREE event, but advance registration is required", that "tickets are limited", and that guests receive complimentary Caribbean food and "a limited number of complimentary drink tokens", with further drinks sold at a cashless bar. The Swanky Kitchen Band is billed as "returning by popular demand", with DJ Craig "flying in from Cayman".

Earlier celebrations were partly sponsored. Cayman Connection, the diaspora group that produced the 2022 event, said it was sponsored by the Ministry of Youth, Sports, Culture and Heritage with food from The Wharf and Grand Old House and support from the Department of Tourism, and drew "over 170 Caymanians, guests, friends and family". The register does not record whether sponsorship offset the office's own cost in any year, and the office had not answered that question by the time of publication.

Westminster receptions

The register also records the office's spending on the Cayman Islands All-Party Parliamentary Group, the cross-party group of UK MPs and peers for which, according to the House of Commons register of such groups, "The Cayman Islands Government Office UK acts as the group's secretariat", with Dr Ebanks Garcia listed as its public enquiry point. The office's entries are £500 for a House of Commons APPG event on 24 January 2020, £1,246 for the group's annual general meeting on 11 April 2023 and £1,000.96 for an "APPG engagement" on 23 May 2023, £5,461.88 for an APPG reception on 30 April 2024, £5,499.20 for a reception on 1 May 2025 and £540.71 for a further engagement on 17 June 2025, a total of £14,248.75.

The Commons register, as at 12 October 2026, lists Labour MP Sarah Champion as the group's chair, with Lord Brady of Altrincham, Baroness Laing of Elderslie and Liberal Democrat MP Edward Morello as officers, and records one benefit in kind received by the group from the "Cayman Islands Government Office in the UK": a reception valued in the band £4,501 to £6,000, received on 25 November 2025, during the week of the Joint Ministerial Council, and registered on 25 June 2026. The office's own website says the group "hosted a special reception" in the Houses of Parliament that evening for the delegation led by the Premier. The group's most recent annual general meeting is recorded as 6 July 2026, the date on which the office's own register enters a Constitution Day reception at £3,200, offered by the Representative to "key stakeholders". As TCJ reported on 14 July, that reception was held at Speaker's House and hosted by the Speaker of the House of Commons, Sir Lindsay Hoyle MP, and brought together parliamentarians from both Houses; the office thanked Ms Champion, Mr Morello, Baroness Laing and the Shadow Foreign Secretary, Dame Priti Patel MP, and the Commissioner of Police, Kurt Walton, attended while in London for a policing conference. Two members of the UK Parliament, whom TCJ is not naming, told TCJ they had not been invited to the Constitution Day reception. The Cayman Islands Government Office UK, Dr Ebanks Garcia's office, had not replied to TCJ's question about who was invited to either reception by the time of publication.

A government office acting as a Westminster group's secretariat is permitted only because of where the Cayman Islands sits in the UK's constitutional arrangements. Since 16 October 2023 the Commons rules on all-party groups have barred a group from accepting a secretariat provided by or on behalf of a foreign government, or funded directly or indirectly by one, and a group's four officers, including its chair and registered contact, must be members of the Commons or the Lords. In an advice note of 25 November 2024, the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, Daniel Greenberg, said he was "satisfied that the concerns underlying the new rule focused on issues that are not relevant" to British Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies, and that "there is no objection to the government of a British Overseas Territory or a Crown Dependency providing support" to a group, including a secretariat. Dr Ebanks Garcia is not an officer of the group; she is listed as its public enquiry point, the optional second contact the rules allow.

The rest of the register

Cayman Day is one of a handful of large items in a register otherwise consisting of working lunches, stakeholder meetings and condolence flowers of under £200 each. The others include a £29,293.10 "Friends of Cayman reception" on 18 November 2021, £27,811.67 for "12 Days of Christmas sponsoring" on 2 December 2021, £13,640 for a "Biodiversity Collage Event" on 8 March 2024, and £3,200 for a Constitution Day reception on 6 July 2026.

The travel register lists 33 trips by the Representative or Deputy Representative since January 2020, costing £88,900.59 in airfares, accommodation, per diems and fees. The Representative has attended the Conservative and Labour party conferences every autumn since 2022, and the Liberal Democrat conference in 2025, at a combined cost of £5,466.60 for the three 2025 conferences, with the purpose recorded as "to network, build relationships, expand knowledge and raise awareness". The most expensive single trip is a 24-day visit to Grand Cayman from 30 January to 22 February 2026, costed at £9,132.53, "to accompany UK delegation in their visit to the Cayman Islands". Other trips include COP26 in Glasgow in 2021, the Monaco Yacht Show in 2022, COP28 in Dubai in 2023 at £4,801.98 and six days in Liège, Belgium, in January 2026 "to support in emergency consular case".

What the physical office costs

The Cayman Islands Government Office in the UK, known as CIGO-UK, occupies the fourth floor of Dover House at 34 Dover Street, London W1, where it shares the premises with another occupant and, the Cabinet Office says, "contributes 47% to all charges". The annual rent is recorded as £195,776 excluding VAT, with service charges of £60,460 in 2026, and the current lease runs from 17 May 2026 to 16 May 2031.

What the office costs to run

The Cabinet Office puts the office's total running cost at CI$1,171,895 in 2022, CI$1,109,369 in 2023, CI$1,071,000 in 2024 and CI$1,086,459 in 2025, in figures it describes as audited, against budgets of CI$1,162,971, CI$1,284,231, CI$1,295,765 and CI$1,313,104. The office moved into the Cabinet Office's portfolio on 1 July 2021, and the Ministry of Social Development and Innovation is separately considering the part of TCJ's request covering the 18 months before that.

After salaries, which were CI$536,936 in 2025, the largest line in each year's accounts is professional fees: CI$271,358 in 2022, CI$195,838 in 2023, CI$196,441 in 2024 and CI$323,433 in 2025. The release does not say what services the fees bought, and the office had not answered TCJ's question on the line by the time of publication.

Dr Ebanks Garcia's appointment was announced by the then Ministry of International Trade, Investment, Aviation and Maritime Affairs in March 2021 and the staffing record gives her start date as May 2021. The post carries a Grade E salary with relocation, housing, transport and telephone allowances, a 12% pension contribution and health insurance, and the Cabinet Office puts its total annual cost, excluding relocation, at between CI$255,309 and CI$296,678 from January 2025, the range reflecting the government's salary scale rather than a single figure. The civil service salary scale in force from 1 January 2025 puts Grade E salaries at between CI$121,356 and CI$155,316 a year, with the scale's first point, CI$118,380, restricted since December 2022; the Cabinet Office's total includes the allowances, pension and insurance as well. The record gives September 2019 as the start date of the previous holder of the post, which the government announced on 16 August 2019 would be taken up by André Ebanks, now the Premier, with effect from 2 September 2019.

What those pictured said

TCJ emailed or telephoned every MP visible in the pictures, and the Attorney General, on 27 and 28 October, putting the same three questions to each: which ministry, portfolio or office paid for their airfare, accommodation and expenses for the trip, whether they were aware of what the London office spends on Cayman Day, and what they consider the event achieves for the taxpayer. The Office of the Premier was emailed separately. The replies, and the absence of them, are set out below.

Opposition Leader Joseph Hew MP, who replied to TCJ by email on 27 October, said he had been invited by the Ministry of Planning and that he had not been aware of the cost of the event. "This was my first time attending the event, but I found that it was an opportunity for our students to network and to showcase Cayman to other invited guests," he said. "I did take the opportunity to meet with other dignitaries whilst on the trip."

Deputy Speaker Pearlina McGaw-Lumsden MP said on 28 October that she was "not privy to the specific financial arrangements or the portfolio from which these expenses were met" and suggested the question be put to the ministers responsible for culture or finance. "As a Caymanian representative, I believe that promoting and preserving our culture is important, particularly at a time when we are seeing significant challenges in maintaining our cultural identity within our community," she said, adding that contact with Caymanian students overseas "can provide reassurance, support and a sense that they have not been forgotten by the country they represent". She said that "our responsibility as elected representatives does not end at the shores of the Cayman Islands", and that 24 hours "is not a reasonable timeframe for a Member of Parliament to obtain and verify information that may require enquiries across government portfolios".

The Portfolio of Legal Affairs answered for Attorney General Samuel Bulgin on 28 October through its Freedom of Information manager, Dave Bailey, who said the purpose of Mr Bulgin's travel "was his attendance at the UK and Overseas Territories Joint Ministerial Council meetings which took place between 24 and 27 November 2025", that the visit "coincided with the Cayman Day celebrations", and that "the Portfolio of Legal Affairs covered the airfare, accommodation and expenses (comprising a per diem) for the period of official travel". He said that because the right of access under section 6 of the Freedom of Information Act "pertains to 'records' rather than requests for information/opinions/explanations, the Portfolio is not obliged to respond to the remainder of your request".

Christopher Saunders MP, speaking to TCJ by telephone on 28 October, said it was his first Cayman Day and that he was "glad I went". He said he had received invitations in previous years, since his election in 2017, and had not taken them up, and answered "No" when asked whether he had been aware of what the office spends on the event. He said he had not realised how many Caymanians live in the UK, that constituents of his were among the guests, and that it "was better than I expected". He said the value lay in contact with Caymanian students: after speaking to students at the event he had approached two companies on his return and secured summer jobs for two of them, and "if you're able to interact with and secure employment for them, it actually was worth it". He said that as a minister he had made one overseas trip in two years because of "money being spent by the public for us on travel", and that once public money is spent, people need to know what is done with it.

The Ministry of Finance and Economic Development's communications manager acknowledged the questions on 27 October, said she would forward the question of who paid for Finance Minister Rolston Anglin MP's travel to the Minister, and said the questions on the event's cost and value "should correctly be referred to" the London office. No answer from Mr Anglin had been received by the time of publication.

Requests for comment

TCJ emailed the Cabinet Office's Department of Communications and the London office asking which event the £27,540 entry relates to, how many people attended each Cayman Day, whether sponsorship or other income offset any of the cost, who was invited to the 25 November 2025 and 6 July 2026 receptions, what the professional fees line comprises, and what the office considers the celebrations achieve. No substantive answer had been received by the time of publication.

The Office of the Premier was also emailed and asked whether the Premier considers the cost of the celebrations, and the office's overall running costs, proportionate to what the office delivers for the Cayman Islands; which public authority met the cost of his airfare, accommodation and expenses in London that week, and what that cost was in total; and whether he plans to attend Cayman Day on 28 November 2026 and has any comment on the records. It replied on 28 October, after TCJ's deadline, asking for an extension to 29 October, and no response had been received by the time of publication. Health Minister Katherine Ebanks-Wilks MP's ministry had not responded by the time of publication. Parliamentary Secretary Julie Hunter MP took TCJ's call on 27 October and said she would call back, but had not done so by the time of publication. Planning Minister Jay Ebanks MP did not respond to TCJ's calls.