Army in £30k bill for biccies

DEFENCE chiefs spent nearly £30,000 on biscuits for top brass and civil servants.

Figures obtained by this newspaper show that since 2016, more than 69,000 packets of chocolate-chip cookies, shortbread fingers, chocolate digestives and Viennese swirls have been scoffed.

The biscuits were supplied in meeting rooms within the Ministry of Defence in London.

Even in lockdown, when the MoD’s London HQ was virtually empty, staff managed to munch their way through 1,100 packets at a cost of over £600, details disclosed in a Freedom of Information request showed.

One senior officer last night said: “The Army is constantly under pressure to cut costs, then we find out civil servants and top brass have spent a fortune on biscuits.

“You couldn’t make it up.”

The cost of biscuits is charged to the team which books the meeting room, the MoD said.

It follows the department being accused of wasting millions on failed defence programmes.

The armed forces has also struggled with an obesity crisis, with thousands of troops suffering from weight problems caused by bad diets. Almost 400 personnel have Type 2 diabetes.

Colonel Richard Kemp, a former British Commander, said: “Maybe the MoD could use the £28,000 it spends on biscuits to contribute to a much-needed funding boost for food produced for the troops by civilian contractors, which is so often well below the standard that would be accepted in the MoD’s plush Whitehall offices.”

An MoD spokesman said: “As with any large organisation, we offer teams the opportunity to order modest refreshments for meetings.”