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End subsidies of MP meals in Parliament

Submitted on Thursday 22nd October 2020

Rejected on Friday 30th October 2020

Current status: Rejected

Rejection code: duplicate (see below for details)

Petition Action

End subsidies of MP meals in Parliament

Petition Details

Currently meals in the Member's Dining Room are subsidised by taxes from the public - this should no longer be the case.

Additional Information

Given the government's recent decision to vote down proposals to give children and starving families free meals, it is our opinion that the principle of not subsidising food should be applied to Members of the House.

If the government is serious that free school meals introduce dependency, this dependency should also be eliminated for Members of Parliament, as they may become dependent on government handouts and act unethically in their positions as representatives.


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This petition was rejected

The Government e-Petitions Team gave the following reason:

There's already a petition about this issue. We cannot accept a new petition when we already have one about a very similar issue.

You are more likely to get action on this issue if you sign and share a single petition.

We have published the following petition, which you might like to sign:

Increase food and drink prices for MPs in House of Commons catering venues: petition.parliament.uk/petitions/555565

The House of Commons Catering service does not provide a subsidised service in the commercial sense of the word. Some venues make a profit, while in other venues the cost of providing the service does exceed the income received in sales due to the irregular hours and unpredictability of parliamentary business. The House of Commons publishes details of the cost of House of Commons catering services: www.parliament.uk/site-information/foi/transparency-publications/hoc-transparency-publications/catering-services/transparency-reporting-catering-services/

Customers of the House of Commons Catering Services include some of the 650 MPs but also around 14,500 other pass-holders, many of whom are staff on lower wages that work irregular hours. In addition, members of the public and non pass holding visitors to Parliament also have access to these services. The irregular hours and the unpredictability of Parliamentary business contribute to increasing the net cost of providing a catering service. To offset this many of the restaurants, dining room facilities and their staff, are used to cater for private events at times when they are not required by the House. This is one of a number of measures used to reduce costs.

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