§ Mr. LidingtonTo ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what proportion of his Department's expenditure on the Research and Statistics Service supports(a) the preparation and publication of statistics and (b) research. [129530]
§ Mr. StrawMy Department's Research, Development and Statistics Directorate (RDS) conducts a wide range of social research, development and statistics work, often using multidisciplinary teams working on a range of statistical and research outputs and for this reason details of expenditure cannot be broken down in the way requested. The available information on RDS expenditure as a whole for the 1999–2000 financial year is shown in the table:
Research, development and statistics expenditure: 1999–2000 financial year Category Total (£) Percentage of total expenditure Staff running costs1 7,827,877 43.9 Costs of RDS publications 495,230 2.8 Other non-pay running costs 3,184,347 17.9 Total running costs 11,507,454 64.5 External research and grants 6,356,819 35.5 Total expenditure2 17,828,772 100 1RDS staff running costs includes £206,985 on communications and publications staff. 2RDS received a total of £454,021 in receipts in 1999–2000, which is excluded from this total. In addition, a number of other areas of the Department undertake research, including the Fire Research and Development Group, which spent £542,998 (including £42,456 VAT recovered) on fire research in 1999–2000 in addition to pay-running costs of £761,787 in support of fire research. The Animal Procedures Committee plan to spend £295,000 on research and the Committee of Inquiry into Hunting with Dogs has spent £225,000 (35 per cent. of the total inquiry expenditure).