To ask the Secretary of State for Defence how many websites his Department operates; how many it operated at 1 January 2005; and what the estimated annual cost has been of running his Department's websites in the last five years.

The Ministry of Defence and armed forces collectively maintain four corporate websites. Identified direct expenditure on running these in the last five years was as follows:

In accordance with the Cabinet Office-led programme of website rationalisation, the MOD is progressively reducing the number of other websites maintained by business units within the Department. On 1 January 2005 MOD and the armed forces collectively maintained eight corporate websites, which have now been reduced to the four listed above. In phase one of the Cabinet Office-led web rationalisation programme MOD identified 44 additional sites, which have now been reduced to 31. I refer the hon. Member to the answer I gave on 10 May 2007, Hansard, columns 348-52W, to Mrs. May which gave the costs of running sites in this category in 2006-07. A further 18 sites, now reduced to 17, were identified within the scope of phase 2 of the web rationalisation programme. Further reductions are planned between now and 2010. Costs for these sites could be provided only at disproportionate cost.

In addition, there are numerous individual unit, regiment, charity, sports and recreation sites, which are maintained independently by the organisations in question and are not classed as part of the corporate websites maintained by the Department. Lists of these sites could be provided only at disproportionate cost.