The government consumed more than 1,400 bottles of wine and spirits at the taxpayer’s expense and topped up its cellar with £27,000 of fresh stock during the two years of the Covid pandemic from 2020 to 2022, new figures show.
The report on the government’s wine cellar was published on Thursday after repeated delays. It showed that 130 bottles were consumed during the year to March 2021, while a further 1,300 were drunk during the year to March 2022.
The consumption was a drastic drop compared with the 3,000 to 5,000 bottles of wine and spirits usually consumed in a year as the government scaled back its activity during lockdown and the lack of international travel.
The cellar is meant to “provide guests of the government, from home and overseas, with wines of appropriate quality at reasonable cost”. But a large amount was still spent during the Covid crisis on topping up reserves. From March 2020 to 2021, £14,621 was splashed out on 516 bottles of red bordeaux wines, costing about £28 each.
The government spent £12,356 on English and Welsh sparkling wines in the year from March 2021, with 636 bottles – including 180 magnums – at an average cost of £19. It also bought 18 bottles of gin, and four bottles each of whisky and liqueurs that year.
Foreign Office minister Andrew Mitchell said in a written statement: “All events organised by government hospitality during this period were done so in strict accordance with Covid-19 restrictions.”
But the shadow attorney general, Emily Thornberry, said: “For months, we have asked why the government was suppressing the publication of this report, and now we know the answer. While the rest of the country was facing Covid restrictions and a cost of living crisis, the government was getting through 1,433 bottles from its wine cellar, and replenishing the stocks with a net spend of more than £100,000 over the three years from 2019-22. They lived the high life at taxpayers’ expense while the rest of the country struggled, and it will never be forgotten.”
Earlier, Tory MP Sir Charles Walker told the House of Commons that shoppers should consider buying “two or three bottles” of Australian wine to “show solidarity” with the nation.
MPs heard the country’s industry has been harmed by China’s imposition of tariffs on Australian wine.
