HC Deb 26 October 1988 vol 139 cc282-3W
Mr. Thomas

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence what information he has as to which Governments of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation member states currently have a policy of publishing line by line costing of their annual defence budgets.

Mr. Archie Hamilton

NATO member states provide each other with classified information in a standard format on the details of their annual defence budgets. Published information, on the other hand, varies considerably beween countries, and my Department does not have a comprehensive knowledge of the policy of each country towards publication.