It is a little-known fact that the Palace of Westminster has been trialling the 24-hour licensing laws for quite some time. Ever since 1773, MPs, peers and their staff have been able to booze on the premises - round the clock, if the Commons has an all-night sitting. The American novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne visited in 1856 and enjoyed a "good, but not remarkably so" dinner of soup, a fish [he couldn't remember if it was salmon or turbot], cutlets and "a bottle of claret, a bottle of sherry, and a bottle of port."
A test case in 1934 confirmed that parliament's bars need no licence to serve alcohol, and there are now six of them: the Press Bar, Annie's, the Pugin Room, the Strangers' Bar, the Members' Smoking Room and, in spring and early summer, the Terrace - not to mention the restaurants and cafes.
Given these extensive opportunities for imbibing, today's revelation that parliamentary staff and MPs bought 23,886 litres of beer, wine and spirits between April and November this year seems quite unremarkable. But the Lib Dem MP Norman Baker, who obtained the figure in a written question, was nonplussed. "It looks like MPs spent the year having a trial run of 24-hour drinking," he said. "I was very surprised by the sheer volume. They have been doing their best to prop up the brewing industry."
Silly Norman. They've been binge drinking for centuries. And it wasn't always cheap: MPs complained in 1863 that a bottle of claret cost ten shillings, a very large sum indeed at the time. By 1912 it had fallen to tenpence.
