Departmental Expenditure Limit

HC Deb 18 June 2002 vol 387 c292W

Mr. Bercow

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs how much and what proportion of the departmental expenditure limit for 2002–03 will be accounted for by staff costs; what the figures were for 2001–02; and if he will make a statement. [61019]

Mr. MacShane

The Foreign and Commonwealth Office's Resource DEL (departmental expenditure limit) for 2002–03 is £1,318,597,000. Due to pay negotiations we are unable to say how much of that we expect to be attributed to staff costs. Comparative provisional outturn figures for 2001–02 show a Resource DEL of £1,268,738,000, of which £316,811,000 or 24.97 per cent. represents the provisional outturn for staff costs. The figure for staff costs includes the cost of locally engaged staff overseas.