Taxpayer to spend £200,000 on refurbishing Parliament restaurant

Taxpayers spend almost £5m a year on food and drink subsidies for MPs. Yet, MPs plan to spend more than £200,000 for refurbishing Parliament’s Strangers’ Dining Room restaurant.

Plans include touching up the restaurant’s carpets, curtains and fireplaces over a 10-week period.

According to the Daily Mail, eight venues in both houses got a total subsidy of £7.2m. Bars, restaurants and cafes in the House of Commons cost taxpayers £4.9m in 2012/13. Over £2.3m of the taxpayers’ money was spent on the eight venues in the House of Lords.

A House of Commons spokesman told the paper: ‘Its [Strangers’ Dining Room] deteriorating condition means conservation work is now necessary to restore many of the room’s historic features to a comparable standard of other Grade 1 buildings and World Heritage Sites and to secure future income generation.”