Ministers have been asked to explain why a report on the UK government’s consumption of wine during the Covid pandemic has been delayed four times over the last year.
Labour said the Foreign Office, which holds the government’s wine collection, should publish the data on its stocks for 2020 to 2022 immediately, as the delay was causing suspicion about how much had been used.
The stock list was originally meant to be published in “early 2023”, was subsequently scheduled for July and then ministers later said it would appear in the autumn.
The last update was from Andrew Mitchell, a Foreign Office minister, who answered a parliamentary question saying it would be published “before the Christmas recess” – but it never materialised by the end of the parliamentary term.
The delays mean it is now two and a half years since the last official statement on the “usage, value, costs and stock levels of the wine cellar” was made in July 2021.
The yet-to-be-published data should cover the period March 2020 to March 2022 – the whole course of the pandemic. Given the cellar is supposed to be used only “to provide guests of the government, from home and overseas, with wines of appropriate quality at reasonable cost”, the report would be expected to show a decline in consumption, given the curbs on indoor gatherings and international travel caused by the Covid pandemic.
In the last report, the cellar’s stock stood at 32,921 bottles of wine and spirits with a market value of £3.2m in March 2020.
More than 7,300 bottles from the cellar were used between April 2018 and the end of March 2020, including 83 bottles of champagne, 47 bottles of gin, and 16 bottles of whisky.
In the 2019-20 financial year, stock was identified for sale with an estimated value of £50,000, but those plans were rolled forward into 2020-21 after the emergence of Covid-19.
The prolonged postponement of the report has raised concerns in the Labour party that the government could be delaying publication until a general election makes it impossible.
Emily Thornberry, the shadow attorney general, said: “One of the ways we know the government is gearing up for an election in May is that they have started running down the clock on all kinds of publications in the hope of delaying disclosure until the purdah period kicks in. We are seeing it in their repeated extension of freedom of information deadlines, we are seeing it in their delays of departmental transparency data, and now we are even seeing it in relation to this wine cellar report.
“But the question we must always ask is why; what are they trying to stop the public finding out until after the election is passed? Whatever the truth, it is ridiculous that we have only had one report on the use of the government wine cellar in the past five years. David Cameron used to say this Tory government would be the most open and transparent in the world. If he meant that, he will stop playing for time and publish this report as soon as parliament returns.”
The FCDO had no comment on the delay. It is understood the report is still due for publication at some point.
