When Green MP Hannah Spencer used her first PMQs question to ask why MPs are allowed to drink alcohol at work, much of Westminster responded with amusement.

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Spencer said she was shocked to discover that some MPs drink before votes because Parliament is “our workplace”. It was a perfectly reasonable point. Yet instead of answering the substance of her question, the Prime Minister brushed it aside with a political jibe.

Frankly, she has a point. In any other occupation, drinking on the job is a sackable offence. You would not ask a judge to imprison someone whilst under the influence; nor would you ask a doctor to treat a patient whilst tipsy. Yet Parliament continues to permit alcohol consumption within the very institution responsible for making the laws the rest of us must obey. That should concern us far more than it apparently does.

This is not an argument for prohibition – most people enjoy a drink. The issue is not alcohol itself, but the culture surrounding it and what that culture says about institutions exercising power.

As a lawyer specialising in abuse claims, I spend much of my professional........

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