To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what estimate he has made of the proportion of UK gross domestic product (a) allocated to and (b) spent by his Department in (i) 1997-98 and (ii) the most recent financial year for which figures are available.

holding answer 3 July 2009

The 1997-98 appropriation accounts for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) show £2,924,205,000 as the net supply grant, which is the total of cash then voted by Parliament, of which £2,871,037,000 was spent. Against a money gross domestic product (GDP) of £843,145,000,000 for 1997-98, the FCO parliamentary supply figure represents 0.347 per cent. of GDP and the corresponding spend represents 0.341 per cent.

However, it should be noted that the appropriation accounts for 1997-98 include £1.8 billion of supply and expenditure for what is now the Department for International Development. This is the largest of the various machinery of government and public expenditure measurement changes that occurred between 1997-98 and 2008-09 which make comparisons of spending figures between the two financial years difficult.

The 2008-09 resource accounts for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office show a net cash requirement of £2,171,707,000, which is the total amount of cash voted by Parliament, of which £2,072,002,000 was spent. Against a money GDP of £1,432,148,000,000 for 2008-09, the Foreign and Commonwealth office parliamentary supply figure represents 0.152 per cent. of GDP and the corresponding spend represents 0.145 per cent.