Government has a taste for wine

The UK government maintains a cellar filled with wines and spirits worth nearly £800,000, according to a Foreign Office minister.

Gillian Merron, parliamentary under-secretary of state for the Foreign office, told parliament that the governement's cellar held over 39,000 bottles of wine. She said that the wine, along with around 500 bottles of spirits and liqueurs, was worth around £792,000.

Merron was responding to a question about the cellar from Liberal Democrat MP Don Foster, who accused the government of living 'beyond its means' and wasting public money on expensive bottles of wine.

Official figures state that last year ministers spent £5m of taxpayers' money on wining and dining and more than £100,000 went on maintaining the Whitehall wine cellar.