To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, what the gold reserves of the Bank of England were on 30 June (a) 1998, (b) 2008 and (c) 2018.

The Bank of England does not own any gold reserves of its own, except for two bars held for display at the Bank of England Museum. However, the Bank provides safe custody for the UK's gold reserves and for other customers. It has only started recently publishing the weight of all the gold in its custody on its website, which includes data back to 2011. On 30 June 2018, it held 166,516,000 fine troy ounces of gold. There is no equivalent data available for 1998 and 2008.