Labour MP Darren Jones has defended MPs’ right to drink in the House of Commons by describing elected representatives as “office workers” who are “not conducting open heart surgery” – in a response to Green MP Hannah Spencer’s challenge to parliamentary drinking culture that has generated a predictable but entertaining list of other jobs that also involve neither open heart surgery nor the right to drink at work.
Jones, MP for Bristol North West, made the argument on LBC after Spencer’s PMQs intervention earlier this week attracted significant attention for pointing out that MPs drink before voting on legislation – and that the chamber’s subsidised bars sell pints at nearly £2 below the going rate at the pub across the road, at a cost of £7.4 million to taxpayers annually.
What Jones said
Jones told LBC: “MPs are office workers. They’re not conducting open heart surgery. I think if you worked in insurance or banking or in legal services or even in a call centre and you’re working until late, you’re allowed to go and have something to eat on an evening.”
He elaborated on the specific scenario he considers acceptable: “I don’t have a problem when MPs are on the estate until 10 or 11 o’clock at night, having a glass of wine with their dinner. I mean, I don’t think that’s a problem.”
On the question of whether the optics of subsidised daytime drinking are problematic: “It is fine with me. Obviously, if there are MPs who are drinking to excess, that is not acceptable. It is a place of work. We need to make sure that people are acting responsibly. But I don’t accept the characterization that you’ve got a whole tonne of MPs drunk running around the building.”
He also defended the Commons bars on the grounds that voting often happens late: “There are sometimes votes that go very late into the night. You know, 10pm or 11pm at night. It’s not every day. It’s often on a Monday – and it’s not every Monday.”
The open heart surgery problem
The “not conducting open heart surgery” argument was always going to produce a list of other jobs that are also not open heart surgery and also cannot be done with alcohol in the system.
Jones himself provided several of them. He specifically named call centres as an example of a workplace where people working late can have something to eat. What call centre employees cannot do, in any call centre in Britain, is drink alcohol during their shift – late or otherwise. Jones inadvertently made Spencer’s point by citing a workplace where his own distinction does not apply.
Bus drivers are not conducting open heart surgery. They are not permitted to drink before work. Lorry drivers are not conducting open heart surgery. The same applies. Train drivers, pilots, scaffolders, construction workers, teachers during the school day, nurses and care workers – none of them are conducting open heart surgery and none of them can drink at work.
The specific argument Jones is making is not actually “open heart surgery is the threshold.” It is something more specific: that the late hours and the specific nature of parliamentary work make a glass of wine with dinner at 10pm a reasonable exception. That is a more defensible position but it is also not what Spencer was complaining about.
What Spencer actually said
Spencer, the Green MP for Gorton and Denton who won the byelection in February, made a specific and evidenced complaint when she raised the issue at PMQs, as we reported in our full PMQs piece.
She was not primarily complaining about MPs having a glass of wine with dinner at 11pm. She told PoliticsJoe that she could “smell the alcohol when people are in between votes.” She raised the issue in the specific context of voting on legislation covering the climate crisis, disabled rights, housing and child poverty – the implication being that the alcohol was consumed before those votes, not during a late supper.
The chamber’s response to her raising this was “get a life” and “sort your policies out.” Jones’s LBC defence is more measured than that but it addresses a slightly different version of Spencer’s complaint – the late-night glass of wine – rather than the version she actually made, which concerned drinking before votes during the parliamentary day.
The numbers Jones did not address
As we reported in our previous coverage, 76% of Britons say it is unacceptable for MPs to drink before votes. 52% say it is completely unacceptable. Parliamentary bars cost £7.4 million a year, with pints at £5.45 – nearly £2 less than the pub across the road – while running at a £56,000 annual loss despite paying no rent.
Jones described himself as someone who does not frequent the Commons bars often. He is making an argument for colleagues whose behaviour he is not personally replicating. Whether those colleagues are drinking late with their dinner or before afternoon votes is the specific question Spencer raised that his LBC interview did not fully answer.
The Prime Minister, when Spencer raised it at PMQs, did not answer it either – he made a joke about Zack Polanski’s houseboat council tax. The Treasury Secretary’s “not conducting open heart surgery” formulation is at least a direct engagement with the question, even if it addresses a more sympathetic version of it than Spencer actually put.
You can watch the LBC interview in full below:
