There's extensive coverage of the contents of the civil servants' hospitality register in today's papers, summed up as "High life for Sir Humphrey" in the headline on the Daily Mail's splash.
But does it really matter that Sir Brian Bender, the top civil servant at the Department for Business, accepted 52 invitations in a year? On Radio 4's Today programme this morning, Matthew Parris leapt to his defence, saying:
Sir Brian Bender is a Christian martyr to have gone to all these things. I don't think that it [matters]. I think people who sell the idea of corporate hospitality make money out of it, some of the people in the corporations enjoy going to the dos that they're funding, but the people on the whole who attend them, they are doing it in their spare time, it's their evening.
Sir Brian could be in – I don't know where civil servants live – Virginia Water or somewhere like that, by the fire with a whisky during the evening. Instead he's in some ghastly hotel in Park Lane listening to boring speeches talking to people he doesn't really know trying to bend his ear. I don't think Sir Brian will have been influenced in any way.
In his piece today, Michael White says some hospitality is OK, but people have to be careful. What do you think?
