MPs don’t get £56 a day breakfast allowance

A video on social media makes several incorrect claims about food allowances and subsidies for MPs. 

In the clip, a person reads out what she says is “the Terrace Cafeteria menu for yesterday”, which refers to one of several venues in the Houses of Parliament. 

She then says: “They [MPs] get a £56 pound a day, I think it is, allowance. Breakfast allowance.” 

But this is not correct—MPs do not receive a breakfast allowance of £56 a day. We’ve written about similar claims many times before. 

Under rules set by the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (IPSA), MPs can claim £25 per night that they spend away from their constituency or London for parliamentary business to cover all food and non-alcoholic drinks during this time, not just breakfast. They are required to provide evidence of the costs incurred. 

Is the Terrace Cafeteria subsidised by taxpayers?

A second person in the Instagram video says: “We as taxpayers subsidise £4 million a year to that particular cafeteria for it to break even or be cost effective for our MPs to eat,” referring to the aforementioned Terrace Cafeteria. 

Catering services on the parliamentary estate are effectively subsidised by the taxpayers at a cost of millions of pounds each year because overall, they run at a loss. The House of Commons says its catering services are not subsidised in the “commercial sense of the word” but it is correct that public money is spent maintaining the services. The loss is attributed to “irregular hours and unpredictability of parliamentary business”. 

However, the Terrace Cafeteria specifically does not operate at an annual loss of £4 million, as is claimed in the video. It operated at a loss of £2.2 million in 2023/24, which is more than the previous years going back to at least 2019/20. 

In 2023/24, the catering service generally, not just this venue, operated at a loss of £7.8 million. The whole catering service operated at an annual loss of less than £4 million between 2014/15 and 2018/19. 

It’s also worth noting that, as well as 650 MPs, the catering services are also open to around 14,500 parliamentary pass holders such as MPs’ staff, House of Commons staff, civil servants, contractors, peers, journalists and a “large number” of non-pass holding visitors, according to parliament. 

The Terrace Cafeteria is open to House of Commons passholders, though full passholders, MPs and peers who are former MPs are able to bring up to three guests, with some time limitations for full passholders. Some venues are not open to guests. 

What about salaries and expenses? 

Other claims made in the video include that MPs “get £90,000” a year, and can claim an annual £200,000 in expenses to “run their outside offices”. These claims are broadly correct.

As of April 2024, the basic annual salary for an MP is £91,346, with higher salaries for certain roles, including government ministers, the Speaker of the House and Leader of the Opposition. 

For 2023/24, MPs with constituencies in London were able to claim expenses up to £33,840 for office costs and £252,870 for staffing costs, while those outside London can claim £30,570 and £236,170. Information on individual MPs’ staffing and business costs are available on the IPSA website. 

False or misleading claims about politicians and the political process have the potential to affect people’s opinions of individuals, parties or how they choose to vote. Claims like these on social media are very common, and Full Fact has written about other misleading claims and misconceptions about MPs’ expenses and pay many times before.