Wine paid for by the tax payer

Government Hospitality Advisory Committee for the Purchase of Wine publish a partial list of the wines you paid for.

They do point out that:

"A demonstration of the level of value for money that the cellar can provide occurred recently over the wines used at the London Summit in April. You may have seen some coverage in the media indicating that the government used £1400 worth of wine at the 8 official dinners and lunches organised on 1 and 2 April. We calculate that, at a conservative valuation, it would not have been possible to acquire those wines directly in the London wine market for less than £6 000, more than four times the actual cost to the taxpayer."

I am not sure whether buying wine is a good use of tax payers money or not maybe foreign diplomats etc will expect it and the UK will lose out somehow if it is not there but I do feel we need the full facts. Clearly, some wines are a lot cheaper than others so I feel further cost savings could potentially be identified if only we had the full facts.