Purchase of natural mineral water (2022)

Response

In the first instance please note that our response only deals with purchases of natural mineral water made by the House of Commons. The House of Lords is a separate public authority for the purposes of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA) and you may therefore wish to consider forwarding your request to foilords@parliament.uk .

1. How many litres of Natural Mineral Water (NMW) were purchased for the use of MPs, staff, visitors and catering outlets for the House of Commons and House of Lords during F/Y 2021-22.
2. What percentage of the number of litres purchased were in plastic?
and
3. Please provide the number of litres of NMW purchased for each F/Y from 2012 - 2022.

Some information is held by the House of Common in relation to your request.

We hold information about purchases of water – both still and sparkling – by two teams in the House of Commons: our Catering Services team, who operate catering venues on the parliamentary estate, and our Service Delivery team, which maintains workspaces and meeting rooms on the estate.

We hold information dating back to the 2019/20 financial year in relation to purchases of water made by Catering Services, which is shown in the table below. While do not hold information about the number of litres purchased in plastic containers, all of the product names use the terminology ‘glass’, ‘can’ or ‘canned’, rather than ‘bottled’.

It may help you to know that this water is available for purchase in catering outlets across the parliamentary estate, and tap water is also available for free. Aside from periods where Covid-19 lockdown rules were in force, the catering venues on the parliamentary estate are open to around 15,000 passholders. This includes Members of Parliament, their staff, House staff, civil servants, contractors, Peers, members of the Press Gallery and others. Catering venues are also open to a large number of non-pass holding visitors to Parliament.

We also hold information for the 2020/21 financial year in relation to purchases of water made by the Service Delivery team. They purchased 16,776 litres of water during this period. None of the water supplied to the Service Delivery uses plastic containers.