HC Deb 26 February 2003 vol 400 c592W
Mr. Laws

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what his estimate is of the UK's total net financial contribution to the United Nations in each of the last 15 years; and if he will make a statement. [98499]

Mr. Rammell

The UK is fully supportive of the UN and the work it does, and we recognise the need for the organisation to have adequate funding to perform its role. Accordingly, we choose to supplement our annual assessed contributions to the UN regular and peacekeeping budgets and its Specialised Agencies by a significant number of voluntary contributions targeted at a range of UN activities.

The UK has contributed the following amounts to the United Nations in each calendar year since 1992.

Year £
1992 291,770,697
1993 312,116,430
1994 304,969,947
1995 328,855,981
1996 304,577,521
1997 309,260,413
1998 330,058,906
1999 324,407,457
2000 32,500,000
2001 427,458,550

These figures represent both assessed and voluntary contributions, except for 2000, which only represents our assessed contributions to the UN Regular Budget: total figures were not collated for that year.

These figures are taken from the FCO Annual Report, which collates the data on contributions to the UN from all Government Departments. We do not have collated figures prior to 1992, and to obtain them would incur disproportionate cost.