Scottish Government alcohol spend each year: FOI release

Information requested

1. How much does the Scottish Government spend each year on alcohol (for events etc). Please provide data for each year since 2022/23, including the current year to date.

2. Please provide detail on the total volume of alcohol purchased by the Scottish Government. e.g 300 bottles of vodka, 400 bottles of gin etc. Please provide data for each year since 2022/23, including the current year to date.

Response

1. How much does the Scottish Government spend each year on alcohol (for events etc).
Please provide data for each year since 2022/23, including the current year to date.

The total spend on alcohol through Scottish Government contracts was:

2022/23	2023/24	April-Sept 2024
£15,092.25	£6,868.00	£3,986.60

2. Please provide detail on the total volume of alcohol purchased by the Scottish Government. e.g 300 bottles of vodka, 400 bottles of gin etc. Please provide data for each year since 2022/23, including the current year to date.

Alcohol purchased through Scottish Government contracts was as follows:

			2022/23	2023/24	April-Sept 2024
Wine – Red		bottles	58	4	18
Wine – White		bottles	70	12	31
Wine – Not Specified		bottles	415	91	77
Wine - Sparkling		glasses			48
Whisky		glasses			54
Whisky		not known *	N/A	N/A	N/A
Beer		bottles	94
Beer		boxes/cases		4

* This line acknowledges that some Whisky was bought in each of the years requested using Scottish Government epc (electronic purchasing) cards. While the cost of those purchases is included in the response to Question 1 the form in which they were purchased (glasses, bottles etc.) is not available for the reason set out below.

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.

While epc records do not have ‘alcohol’ as a category it is possible that alcohol is included in spend recorded against terms such as 'meal', 'dinner', ‘drinks’ or 'hospitality'. Identifying any alcohol included in purchases recorded using these terms would require the original receipts to be retrieved from each of the relevant Budget Centre Liaison Officers (BCLO).

As a result, in order to supplement the information provided with alcohol included within epc and/or hospitality spend the relevant BCLOs would have to review every purchase and/or claim that had been recorded using terms such as 'meal', 'dinner', 'drinks' or 'hospitality' in order to establish, firstly, if it included alcohol and, secondly, if it was included what was 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.

Therefore, while we have been able to provide the cost of epc purchases of ‘whisky’ establishing the form in which they were purchased (glasses, bottles etc.) would require the sort of labour-intensive searches described above.

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

About FOI

The Scottish Government is committed to publishing all information released in response to Freedom of Information requests. View all FOI responses at https://www.gov.scot/foi-responses.