Facebook posts falsely claim David Lammy personally spent half a million pounds on food and drink expenses as foreign secretary

Posts on Facebook claiming that David Lammy MP personally claimed over half a million pounds in food and drink expenses while he was foreign secretary are misleading.

A number of social media posts have claimed that: “David Lammy has been in his role as foreign secretary for 233 days racking up £521,525 in food and drink expenses. An impressive £2238 a day.”

Mr Lammy held the role of foreign secretary from July 2024 to September this year. He is now Lord Chancellor, Secretary of State for Justice and Deputy Prime Minister.

But this claim about his spending while in the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) refers to procurement card spends of over £500 in restaurants and bars, covering the entirety of the FCDO over a four month period, not his personal food and drink expenses.

An FCDO spokesperson previously told Full Fact the social media post was “false and misleading” and confirmed the spend “relates to the entire FCDO Network—covering over 17,000 staff across 281 worldwide offices—over a period of four months”.

The £521,525 figure appears to have come from FCDO data on procurement card spending over £500.

In 2024, spending above £500 in the category “restaurants and bars” was £136,443.92 in July, £93,005.02 in August, £108,422.64 in September, and £183,655.84 in October, the latest month data was available for when the claim originally began circulating in February.

This adds up to a total of £521,527.42—very close to the figure used on social media, but crucially this spending is for the whole department.

According to the same departmental datasets, during the last four months of the previous Conservative government (between 1 March and 30 June 2024) equivalent FCDO spending was £575,479.79.

Publicly available data on ministerial gifts, hospitality, travel and meetings is available for Mr Lammy’s time as foreign secretary. This shows that his “associated costs”, which includes all visas, accommodation and meals, but not travel itself, was £7,788.87 between July 2024 and 23 February 2025, his 233rd day in the job. This figure does not break down the food costs (which would likely be a proportion of the total), but is still far below the £521,525 claimed in the social media posts.

Full Fact has written about other misleading claims and misconceptions about MPs’ expenses many times before.

Before sharing claims that you see about politicians, it’s important to consider whether they come from a trustworthy and verified source. False or misleading claims about politicians have the potential to affect people’s opinions of individuals, parties or how they choose to vote.