A four-star hotel booked by Unite officials attending today’s Durham Miners’ Gala was reprimanded last year for failing to pay its workers the minimum wage.

A four-star hotel booked by Unite officials attending today’s Durham Miners’ Gala was reprimanded last year for failing to pay its workers the minimum wage.

Senior Unite officials have been posting photos of themselves enjoying champagne and fine dining at the four-star Ramside Hall Hotel in Durham ahead of today’s gala. The hotel’s website boasts of luxury spa treatments, three restaurants and two 18-hole golf courses.

But the hotel was reprimanded by the government in December last year for failing to pay its own workers the minimum wage, resulting in angry reviews online. Ramside Estates Limited, which runs the hotel, was found to have failed to pay £17,536 in wages to eight of its workers. The firm blamed the failure on “an issue with the clocking in machine” and complained that “we are being made a scapegoat”.

Unite is currently running a national campaign for fair pay in the hospitality industry, personally backed by Len McCluskey, making the mistake all the more embarrassing.

Meanwhile, members of Jeremy Corbyn’s office are rumoured to have booked into Durham’s luxurious Hotel Indigo, featuring a gym, cocktail bar and Marco Pierre White Steakhouse. Corbyn’s team are said to have snubbed the dowdy Royal County Hotel traditionally used by Labour leaders to address the crowds after finding it did not meet their exacting standards last year.