National Archives
Justice
Written answers and statements, 14 September 2009
Patrick Mercer (Newark, Conservative)
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice
(1) how much the annual budget for the National Archives (a) has been in each year since 1997 and (b) is for 2009-10;
(2) which organisations were consulted before the decision was taken to reduce the budget of the National Archives by £4.2 million.
Michael Wills (Minister of State, Ministry of Justice; North Swindon, Labour)
The National Archives was created in April 2003. Since then it has featured in a series of machinery of government changes. The first occurred in 2006 with the transfer of the Office of Public Sector Information (OPSI) from the Cabinet Office, and the second in 2008 when the Statutory Publications Office (SPO) moved from the Ministry of Justice both adding to the scope of the National Archives' policy and service delivery responsibilities.
The table shows the resource and capital budget out-turn for the National Archives for the period 2003-04 to 2008-09 and the current budget plans for 2009-10. In order to ensure proper comparability all the figures shown above assume that both OPSI and the SPO are part of the National Archives throughout.
| £ million | |||||||
| Out-turn | Plan | ||||||
| Year | 2003 | 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | 2007 | 2008 | 2009 |
| Financial year | 2003-04 | 2004-05 | 2005-06 | 2006-07 | 2007-08 | 2008-09 | 2009-10 |
| Department | TNA | TNA | TNA | TNA | TNA | TNA | TNA |
| MOG (year and body merged) | OPSI | SPO | |||||
| Budgeting spending | |||||||
| Resource | 39.1 | 39.0 | 42 4 | 39.3 | 43.2 | 45.4 | 48.7 |
| Capital | 3.4 | 2.0 | 1.9 | 2.7 | 5.8 | 3.3 | 2.1 |
| Total department spending (the adjusted total of resource plus capital minus depreciation) | 38.2 | 36.3 | 39.7 | 37.2 | 44.3 | 44.3 | 44.2 |
There have been no cuts to the National Archives' budget. They have recently announced some proposals for restructuring their public services to ensure they can operate sustainably for the next few years. The Lord Chancellor and I have been fully briefed on both the rationale and details of the proposals. We are both supportive of them recognising that these were operational decisions made by the management team.