Labour accuses government of holding back data on use of official alcohol stock between March 2020 and 2022
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.
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dizzy: It’s tempting to imagine a cover-up of that pisshead Boris raiding the wine cellar.