Supplementary memorandum from the Parliamentary
Press Gallery
Thank you for the opportunity to give evidence
to your committee last week. Subsequent to that, and ahead of
our meeting next Monday, we are writing to ask if you would let
us have the figures regarding subsidy of the Press Cafeteria,
which several members of the committee used as the basis for their
questions, ie that the Press Cafeteria is subsidised six times
the amount of other catering facilities in the House.
We have not seen these figures or heard them
referred to before. Naturally we would wish our catering facilities
to be run in the most cost-effective manner possible and are willing
to assist the Refreshment Department in any steps to do so, for
example in surveying members of the Gallery about menus, in addition
to opening up access to the Press Cafeteria to other passholders.
We would also wish to point out that the proposed
refurbishment plans for the Gallery, initiated by the House of
Commons Commission and discussed by the previous Accommodation
and Work Committee, involve moving the current Press bar so that
all Press catering facilities adjoin one another. This was specifically
requested by the Refreshment Department, whose director has made
plain at meetings of the Project Board responsible for the project
that this would enable substantial savings to be made to staffing
budgets. We therefore assume that, if the plans went ahead as
proposed, the amount of subsidy carried by the Press cafeteria
would fall substantially, in addition to the increase in custom
and therefore in revenue we would expect following the replacement
of current inadequate kitchen facilities.
In our experience, figures for usage catering
facilities serviced by these kitchens, ie the Press dining room
and cafeteria, do not include the large amount of revenue generated
by monthly Press Gallery lunches in the dining room, which for
internal purposes are charged to the banqueting department.
5 December 2006
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