Total amount of money spent by Scottish Government on alcohol: FOI release

Information requested

1) The amount of money spent by the Scottish Government on alcohol in 2020/21 and so far in 2021/22 and,

2)  A breakdown of exactly what type of alcohol, plus the volume of each type of alcohol, purchased.

Response

The answer to your first question (spend on alcohol) and the first part of your second question (type of alcohol) is included in the table below.

	Whisky	Gin	Wine	Beer
2020/21	£344.32* £2,630.93 £1,455.00
2021/22	£552.94		£16.30	£975.67

* this amount relates to a single purchase of whisky and gin where no split is available without further investigation.

The data in the above table was assembled from information provided by the Scottish Government's catering contractor and information extracted from electronic purchasing card (epc) records. The data includes purchases that relate to: events to promote the Scottish whisky industry, Burns Nights and, major sporting events that included Scottish participation. The epc records do not have alcohol as a category so, in order to identify any spend, a search had to be made against different types of alcohol. Searches were undertaken against: beer, bourbon, brandy, champagne, cocktail, gin, lager, rum, schnapps, shots, vodka, whisky and wine.

Providing alcohol at government expense is allowed when official hospitality is at a restaurant or reception, where a modest amount of alcohol can be provided in line with the Scottish Government policy on alcohol. Therefore, it is possible that alcohol was also included in epc spend recorded against terms such as 'meal', 'dinner', 'drinks', or through claims for 'hospitality', but this is not included in the above table. To confirm whether or not alcohol was included in spend which was recorded using these terms would require the original receipts to be retrieved from each of the relevant Budget Centre Liaison Officers (BCLO).

You may be interested to know that Scottish Government staff are not permitted to seek reimbursement for alcohol under Travel and Subsistence (T&S) claims rules.

The Scottish Government does not hold any already compiled information on the purchase of alcohol. As a result, in order to supplement the information in the table above with any epc and/or hospitality spend we would have to ask relevant BCLOs to review every purchase and/or claim that had been recorded using the terms 'meal', 'dinner', 'drinks' or 'hospitality' in order to establish, firstly, if it included alcohol and, secondly, its value. While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance, because it would be a labour-intensive process, the costs of locating, retrieving and providing the information requested from epc and/or hospitality records would exceed the upper cost limit of £600.

Under section 12 of FOISA public authorities are not required to comply with a request for information if the authority estimates that the cost of complying would exceed the upper cost limit, which is currently set at £600 by Regulations made under section 12.

Regarding the second part of your question, the only purchase for which further details on the type of alcohol purchased are readily available is the 2021/22 purchase of wine which relates to a single bottle of Matos Tinto red wine at a cost of £16.30.

The Scottish Government does not hold any already compiled information on the purchase of alcohol. As a result, in order to supplement the information in the table above with any epc and/or hospitality spend we would have to ask relevant BCLOs to review every purchase and/or claim that had been recorded using the terms 'meal', 'dinner', 'drinks' or 'hospitality' in order to establish, firstly, if it included alcohol and, secondly, its type. While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance, because it would be a labour-intensive process, the costs of locating, retrieving and providing the information requested from epc and/or hospitality records would exceed the upper cost limit of £600.

Under section 12 of FOISA public authorities are not required to comply with a request for information if the authority estimates that the cost of complying would exceed the upper cost limit, which is currently set at £600 by Regulations made under section 12.

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