What are Parliament’s bars really like?

Aquarone says he understands Powell’s point but, he argues, some people in Parliament need to be protected from colleagues.

“If I wanted to go for a drink with my team, I could choose anywhere in London where no one would know who we were and no one would know that we were there and that’s actually a far more secure way of having a safe night out.”

One new Labour MP said with many of the new intake their 30s with young children, there may be some drinking on a Monday night when there’s no vote until 10pm, but MPs are more aware that they shouldn’t be drinking with staff.

The terrace provided a good place to get to know new colleagues last summer and were bonding over booze, but the Labour MPs of old who had a pint at lunchtime are gone, they said.

In fact, some new MPs are pushing for Parliament’s bars to be closed at lunchtime, or even shut down altogether, as part of a modernisation programme.

This would not go down well with ordinary Parliamentary staff or many of the 14,500 pass holders with access to the pubs and bars on the estate.

“Parliament is a unique place, it’s like a village, why shouldn’t we have a bar? It’s the Houses of Parliament, not Ibiza,” one woman, who has worked in Parliament for nearly three decades, tells me.

She is enjoying an after work pint with a friend in the Lords Terrace bar, which has the slightly soulless feel of an airport lounge and tends to attract an older crowd.

They both think the public have got the wrong idea about Westminster drinking – friends are always disappointed when they get to see what the bars are actually like, they say.

“It’s just a place to relax and have a chat with your pals,” says the woman, as she drains her pint and pulls on her coat.

It’s certainly hard to imagine life at Westminster without pubs and bars, but changing social attitudes are lapping at the gates of its historic drinking dens.

Maybe one day they will call time.

Additional reporting by Ben Wright, BBC political correspondent and author of Order! Order! The Rise and Fall of Political Drinking.