The Scottish government failed to properly scrutinise lavish spending at a body charged with regulating Scottish Water, according to a new report.
Holyrood's public audit committee said a lack of expenditure oversight at the Water Industry Commission for Scotland (Wics) was "simply unacceptable".
A report by the auditor general detailed how public money was spent sending a senior manager on a course at Harvard Business School in the US, Mulberry sunglasses and business-class flights to New Zealand.
A Scottish government spokesperson said steps had been taken to improve management at the commission, but acknowledged previous expenditure "was completely and utterly unacceptable".
Committee convener Richard Leonard told BBC Radio's Good Morning Scotland programme that there had been a "flagrant misuse" of public money.
He said: "This is a body to promote value for the customers of Scottish Water, and yet by any measure it fell well below the standards of what any public body should meet in the way it conducts its own affairs."
He added there was constant excessive expenditure on hospitality, including meals and alcohol.
He said: "In 2023 a decision was taken that there should be no limit whatsoever on the organisation's expenditure on things like alcohol. It really has been an extraordinary catalogue of misuse of public money."
