Sunday, August 02, 2026
Westminister needs to tackle its drinking culture
The paper says that drinking is commonplace and some MPs have had their stomachs pumped after consuming so much alcohol that they ended up in hospital, one disclosed:
The IAS report also found that:
* 42% of the MPs interviewed had been offered an alcoholic drink at a work meeting or event on a weekly basis during the previous six months; 13% said that occurred daily.
* 22% had concerns about a colleague’s drinking.
Parliament’s long and unusual working hours, the loneliness many MPs experience being away from home, the pressures of the job and socialising in order to advance their careers can all act as catalysts for drinking.
The report added: “The availability of alcohol was seen to encourage unhealthy behaviour in general, from affecting colleagues’ sleep and stress levels to potentially normalising high-risk drinking, with one MP referring to colleagues having had their stomachs pumped in hospital and going back into Westminster the following day.”
Some MPs said the findings should prompt Westminster to rethink its attitude to alcohol. The Labour MP Cat Smith said: “We wouldn’t accept a surgeon operating after a drink or a driver getting behind the wheel – so why should we accept legislators voting on the laws of the land after one?
“If we’re serious about being a professional workplace, we have to ask hard questions about practices like late night votes that sit alongside on-tap bars.”
Beccy Cooper, who was a public health consultant before entering parliament as a Labour MP in 2024, said the report was a wake-up call. In a foreword to the report, she suggested that parliament should draw up its first formal workplace policy on alcohol.
She added: “Two findings stood out to me. Almost one in 10 respondents reported a negative experience because of someone else’s drinking at work and 70% either didn’t know, or weren’t sure, how to raise a concern about a colleague’s drinking.
“That combination – real, measurable harm and no clear route to address it – is exactly the kind of gap we need to address.”
This is no way to run a country. Alcohol would not be available in any other workplace during working hours, so how can the position in Parliament be justified? It is a culture that needs to be urgently tackled.
