VICTORIA - Speaker of the Legislature Linda Reid apologized for billing taxpayers to send her husband to South Africa and repaid $5,500 in business-class flights Tuesday.

"If this has caused anyone any consternation I sincerely apologize," she told reporters in her office at the legislature.

Reid said she had repaid $5528.16.

The move came within hours after Reid admitted to The Vancouver Sun that she billed the business-class flights, hotels and other expenses to the public so that her husband could accompany her to a parliamentary conference in South Africa in August and September of 2013.

She said taxpayers also paid for her husband's accommodations and other expenses while in South Africa, which she admitted amount to thousands of dollars.

"The policy that we're hopefully going to have some more conversation about at finance and audit [committee] says if you can take a second person for the price of a single ticket, that has been the practice here for a long, long time," Reid told The Sun.

Within two hours after speaking to The Sun, Reid called a snap press conference in her office to announce the repayment. She said there are also additional hotel and food costs she will have to repay once she has calculated the amount.

In addition to raising questions about the appropriateness of taxpayer funds being used to transport a spouse overseas, flying business class also violates an order issued by Finance Minister Mike de Jong to legislature officials earlier this year.

"I've directed the ministers they're not to fly business class," de Jong told the legislature management committee and Reid in January.

"It is one of those things where if we're trying to demonstrate some leadership on cost-cutting, it really should be, in my view, the absolute exception."

Many airlines call first-class accommodation business class, and business class is the top-priced seat for flights on Air Canada.

Reid could not provide a full accounting of her trips Tuesday, and has twice refused to answer written requests by The Sun over the last month for additional information about her out-of-province travel.

She said she's currently compiling the financial figures, and won't have them until the end of the month.

Reid said she's not aware of any other trips for her husband that she billed taxpayers, but when asked if she'd do so again in the future she said: "We'll certainly have the conversation at finance audit [committee] in terms of whether or not we'll change the practice."

The questions on Reid's husband's travel costs come just weeks after she was under fire for approving tens of thousands of dollars in expenses at the legislature, including a $48,000 custom computer in the chamber, almost $14,000 in new curtains and $13,449 for a new MLA TV lounge with free muffins and snacks displayed on a $733 snack rack.

Reid defended some expenses as necessary to improve wheelchair access, but politicians who are supposed to oversee legislature spending during a time of fiscal austerity criticized her for not getting approval, and ultimately voted to limit her powers and force MLA approval of anything worth more than $5,000.