PARLIAMENT had a drinking culture “like freshers’ week,” a former MP has claimed. Heidi Allen said that there was “massively” a problem with the drinking culture when she was an MP between 2015 and 2019, partly because people were “away from home”.“You would literally see MPs wineglass-hopping from room to room,” Allen told a Bright Blue event, “[with] no interest whatsoever if they’re in an event about dogs and in the next room was an event about saving Palestine... bored evening on a Thursday night waiting for the last vote, it’s gone 10, so why not?”Allen, who was a Tory MP before switching to Change UK and then the Liberal Democrats, added “the smell of alcohol in the voting lobbies could be quite strong sometimes”.
She explained to the discussion, which was about whether Britain is getting the right MPs, that with Parliamentary lobbyists in Westminster there would often be “a couple of corridors” full of events.
