With NSW Parliament over until the end of September, Ms Hay and Liberal MP and Opposition spokesman for the Illawarra Greg Pearce are both heading for London and beyond.

Ms Hay is off to Britain, Ireland, Canada and the United States to brush up on health, steel and tourism while Mr Pearce is going to London, Ireland and Scotland for financial briefings including public-private partnerships.

"I will be undertaking many important meetings relevant to both my role as Parliamentary Secretary for Health and as the Member for Wollongong," Ms Hay said yesterday.

Some of the highlights of her overseas trip include visiting the Irish and British parliaments, a meeting with tourism operators in County Cork and a meeting with key ministers of the Canadian government.

"I will be promoting tourism in the Illawarra and will distribute a number of tourism packages to promote our region," Ms Hay said.

She will also visit the Nurse Service of New York, the largest not-for-profit home health care agency in the US.

Labor MP Christine Robertson, who chairs the upper house's law and justice committee, will spend three weeks in London, touring prisons, meeting parole officers and investigating the rehabilitation of the most hardened criminals.

Hornsby MP Judy Hopwood is giving London a miss but is jetting to the US to learn about homelessness while Labor MP, Tony Catanzariti also has a study tour booked in, although he was not available yesterday to detail his itinerary.

Backbenchers are not the only ones travelling. Kiama MP and Minister for Tourism Matt Brown will spend 10 days in September in India, leading a delegation of tourist operators.

His brief is to promote Sydney as a tourism, business and education destination.

Parliamentary speaker, Richard Torbay, the clerk of the Parliament, Russell Grove, and two Labor backbenchers, Angela D'Amore and Karen Paluzzano are off to Malaysia for a meeting of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association.

The study trips were revealed as it was reported that Premier Morris Iemma and his ministers have spent more than $800,000 on overseas travel in the past year.

Among the top ministerial jet setters, Transport Minister John Watkins spent $58,551 taking his wife, young son and staff to Hong Kong, Rome, London and Paris and on a trip to Singapore.