MR. GOEDON (Elgin and Nairn, S.)I beg to ask the Secretary to the Admiralty if he can state, approximately, the amount paid for coal in the naval expenditure during the past financial year; and if he can state what the cost of last year's coal consumption would have been had it been paid for at the average prices of the preceding ten years.
§ THE SECRETARY TO THE ADMIRALTY (Mr. ARNOLD-FORSTER, Belfast, W.)Complete information is not yet to hand as to some of the local purchases on distant stations, but the expenditure on coals for the Fleet during the financial year 1900–1 may be taken approximately at £1,700,000. Averaging the prices for the last ten years at stations all over the world and including freights as well as the prices of coal, the cost of the quantities purchased in 1900–1 would have been about £1,100,000, but the circumstances of the year were exceptional, inasmuch as the requirements were large on two stations—namely, China and South Africa, to which freights were abnormally high.