§ Baroness Gould of Potternewtonasked Her Majesty's Government:
Whether there are any plans to amend the Department for Culture, Media and Sport's departmental expenditure limit for 2001–02. [HL57].
§ The Minister of State, Department for Culture, Media and Sport (Baroness Blackstone)Subject to parliamentary approval of the necessary Supplementary Estimate for the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, the Departmental Expenditure Limit (DEL) for 2001–02 will be increased by £18,700,000 from £1,123,396,000 to £1,142,096,000.
The changes are to provide an additional resource of £18,000,000 to the British Tourist Authority and the English Tourism Council toward the costs of promoting tourism to counter the adverse effects of foot and mouth disease on the industry; to provide an additional resource of £100,000 from the Capital Modernisation Fund toward the development of Internet access to the British Museum's Timeline of History and for the linking of this to Culture Online, the National Grid for Learning and local systems; and to provide an additional resource of £600,000 from the Capital Modernisation Fund toward the development of the English Tourism Council's Modernising English Tourism Destination Services, an electronic data sharing network using the web to link tourism providers and customers.
The increases will be offset by transfers or charged to the DEL Reserve and will not therefore add to the planned total of public expenditure.