Catering subsidy (2022)

Response

1) The total value of the subsidy provided to the all House of Commons dining rooms and other eating facilities for the past five financial years broken down on a year by year basis.
and
2) The total value of the subsidy provided to the all House of Commons bars for the past five financial years broken down on a year by year basis.

In the first instance, please note that the House accepts that there is a great deal of public interest in sales from our food and drink venues, and we are frequently asked about ‘catering subsidies’. However, catering services for the House of Commons are provided by an in-house team who do not provide a subsidised service in the commercial sense of the word. Parliament provides a range of catering services to Members, House staff, the Press Gallery and a large number of visitors. As a workplace this includes staff canteens that are available for people who work in Parliament. The services aren’t directly subsidised, but they unavoidably come at a cost due to the irregular and unpredictable hours that Parliament works. The service continuously seeks to reduce costs whilst regularly benchmarking their prices with venues outside of Parliament.

On this understanding, information relating to the costs of each of our catering venues will be held by the House.

Some information is held by the House in relation to your request. At the time of response, we do not currently hold the information requested for the 2021/22 financial period, as this is still being processed and is therefore not held at the time of your request. We do however hold the information requested for the periods 2017/18 to 2020/21.

For the periods 2017/18 and 2018/19, while the House holds this information, it is already available from a public source. This information is exempt from disclosure in accordance with section 21(1) and (2)(a) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA), which removes a public authority from the obligation to provide access to information which is already in the public domain. This is an absolute exemption and the public interest test does not apply.
However, it may help you to know that information relevant to your request can be found on our webpages at:

• 2017/18
• 2018/19

For the periods 2019/20 and 2020/21, this information is held by the House of Commons

• 2019 to 2021

Please note the following additional information about the cost/contributions figures provided:

• There are three bars managed by the House on the estate, and these are the Pugin Room, the Members’ Smoking Room and the Strangers’ Bar.
• While the customers who use the on-site catering venues include some of the 650 elected Members of Parliament, they also include around 14,500 other pass-holders (MPs’ staff, House staff, civil servants, contractors, Peers, members of the Press Gallery, etc.) as well as a large number of non-pass holding visitors to Parliament.

• For these figures, please note that a negative value denotes where a venue makes a contribution and a positive value denotes where the figure is a cost. (If a venue has a net cost which is negative, this means the outlet was a contributing site where its revenue exceeded the cost of operating, therefore reducing the overall cost of catering.)

• Sales figures for the 2017/18 and 2019/20 financial years were lower than per usual as a result of the 2017 General Election in the 2017/18 period, and both prorogation and the 2019 General Election in the 2019/20. This is because it is not usual for our catering outlets to be open when the House is in recess, or during Dissolution.

• Likewise, sales and cost/contribution figures for the 2020/21 financial year are also an exception, and you will see that they do not reflect the usual income or costs for the House of Commons’ catering outlets. Costs are higher than previous years, and income lower, as a result of either a reduced service or the temporary closure of venues, both as a result of COVID-19 related lockdowns. Of the 18 venues which were normally open and generating income, only two remained open for the full year. Restrictions on access and distancing rules meant sites that would normally reduce the cost of catering, such as banqueting and bars, were closed entirely or for the majority of the year. This was necessary as the House of Commons had a duty to follow government rules regarding national restrictions, and to maintain a COVID secure environment.