Drink Sales (2021)
Request
Please could you provide me with a full list of all alcohol purchased in Parliament's bars between 1 January 2020 and 31 December 2020 – broken down by month? If possible, please could you also provide the type of drink purchased and the cost of each alongside a total sales figure for each month?
Response
Please note that the House of Commons and the House of Lords are two separate public authorities for the purposes of the Freedom of Information Act 2000. This response therefore only covers bars on the parliamentary estate operated by the House of Commons (the Strangers’ Bar, the Pugin Room and the Members’ Smoking Room). For information about catering venues administered by the House of Lords, you will need to contact them directly.
This information is held by the House of Commons.
Please note the following in relation to the data:
• Sales for each month are split into sections, each of which have subtotals at the beginning both for sales count and sales total.
• For the months that do not appear, it is because there were no sales or the bars were closed.
• The cost of each individual drink can be calculated by dividing the sales total by the sales count for that drink.
It may interest you to know that over 15,000 people can access the parliamentary estate and use its services, of which only 650 are MPs. The on-site catering venues are also used by staff of the House of Commons Administration and contractors, such as facilities staff, security staff and building contractors, as well as Members’ staff, Peers and their staff and Members of the Press Gallery. Products sold in these venues are always charged at more than they cost and everybody pays the same price. Further details of our price lists, access arrangements, sample menus and other helpful information about the catering service is proactively published by our in-house catering team, in the interests of transparency. This can be found on our Transparency pages.