MPs have been compared to rowdy university freshers after vomit and used condoms were discovered in their parliamentary offices. The politicians, who share their offices with researchers and other assistants, could now be asked to sign up to a code of conduct as cleaners in parliament are no longer prepared to tidy up after their debauchery.

While some might be shocked at the discovery of such unruly behaviour from our parliamentarians, those who work in the cleaning industry are less surprised. “I’ve found vomit everywhere and shit in the sinks; that’s the kind of thing you can expect to see,” says Peter, who works for a cleaning company based in central London. “You speak to any cleaning company and they’ll tell you they’ve seen that.”

Peter says that he hasn’t found used condoms in a long time, but he has come across syringes and what he believed to be cocaine in office spaces. “It’s normal behaviour for some clients, [although] it’s not common,” Peter says. Is finding faeces in sinks normal, too? “That’s happened maliciously, we believe, so it’s rare. Every two or three years it happens and not in just one place. It’s disgusting and you’re shocked, but it’s not a surprise any more.”

However, Janet Collins, the managing director of ServiceMaster Clean, based in south-east London, says that what Peter describes, and what was found in parliament, is not the norm for an office environment. “I’ve never come across it,” she says. She believes offices can get messy when there is not a cleaning culture in place, but food leftovers are generally the worst that her employees have had to deal with. What would she do if her staff were confronted with vomit and used condoms? “We wouldn’t be cleaning it,” she says. “We would give them notice.”