William Hague doesn’t seem keen to be involved in the rest of the government’s belt tightening exercises.
First he was adamant that the country’s international embassy network should be exempt from cost-saving scrutiny.
Now his department is playing mum over the contents of their wine cellar. The total cost has been revealed as £864,000, but Tom Watson, Defence Secretary under Labour, is demanding an itemized inventory.
In other words, does the cellar contain around 124,000 bottles of cheap wine for turning up at dignitaries doors in bring-a-bottle style, or 8000 bottles of Mouton Rothschild for gifting, groveling and general palm-greasing?
Unfortunately, there is no immediate answer coming. After a certain amount of heel-dragging over the issue of protecting their relationships with their suppliers, the FCO has now said it won’t be able to get back to Mr Watson until at least the end of August, citing summer holidays of staff and preparations for the Papal visit.
This despite the fact the government has already admitted that it has the information prepared.
So the government is postponing this particular embarrassment, but we should remember, they didn’t take away the kiddies milk, we shouldn’t begrudge them their wine.
I love this story, and Tom Watson get’s endless mileage (and column inches) out of it. But I think there’s less to it than meets the eye! Although not sure Tom Watson would agree.
Earlier in the summer, when the “government spends £18k to top up wine cellar” story broke, Decanter reported that there were 37,000 bottles stocked.
That’s an average price of a bit more than £23. It would be nice if there were a few bottles of Mouton or Le Pin, but a cellar-full there isn’t. All the more crazy that the mandarins at the FCO are so bent on keeping it all a big secret.
More on that earlier story, and my thoughts on how the government might get even better value for money here: http://winenotebook.wordpress.com/2010/06/24/should-uk-government-buy-18000-bottles-of-99p-wine/
It does seem to be the story that runs and runs. Bless Tom Watson, he really has got the cork between his teeth on this one. I wonder what he’ll do when we the FCO finally publish the list – he will have lost of single reason for being!!