MPs don’t give a fig roll Biccies spend hits £39k-a-yr at Commons
FORGET having wafer-thin majorities – MPs are taking the biscuit by splashing out on sweet treats.
The amount spent has doubled in a decade, with KitKats topping sales at the House of Commons.
Ten years ago, MPs and other Parliament staff spent £22,000 of their own money in 12 months on treats. By 2018, it nudged £48,000.
A Freedom of Information request asking for “total expenditure on biscuits” for three years revealed 43 varieties had been scoffed – down from 56 in 2008. In 2017-18, MPs spent £34,950 on biccies. In 2018-19 it rose to £47,950 before dipping to £39,074 in 2019-20.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn is said to be a shortbread fan while PM Boris Johnson prefers a chocolate digestive. Lib Dem co-leader Ed Davey fancies a fig roll.
KitKat (£5,153) Twix (£5,033) White choc and raisin cookie (£4,492) 4. Paterson’s snack packs (£4,480) 5. Double Belgian choc cookies (£4,111)
THE bravery of a Muslim princess who gave her life spying for Britain in the Second World War is being celebrated for International Women’s Day today.
Noor Inayat Khan, pictured above in uniform and playing the sitar, was the first female radio operator sent into Nazi-occupied France. She had an Indian father, American mother and was descended from Tipu Sultan, the 18th century ruler of Mysore.
A fluent French speaker, she joined the top-secret Special Operations Executive in 1942 and sent back vital messages from Paris resistance fighters. But she was betrayed, captured, tortured then executed in Dachau concentration camp in 1944, aged just 30.
Awarded both the George Cross and French Croix de Guerre, her courage is now marked in a digital exhibition at Runnymede Air Forces Memorial in Surrey. Girl guide visitor Jasmine Theti, 15, said: “We must never forget her and the sacrifice she made.”