§ Mr. BreedTo ask the Secretary of State for Defence how much money Britain contributes to each of the OCCAR projects; what proportion this represents of the total costs of each of the projects; and what proportion this represents of the total OCCAR budget. [109085]
§ Mr. Ingram[holding answer 1 May 2003]: The Organisation for Joint Armament Co-operation (OCCAR) currently manages seven collaborative defence equipment programmes. Of these, the UK participates in the COBRA (Counter Battery Radar) and BOXER (Multi-Role Armoured Vehicle) programmes. The UK does not participate in, nor contribute towards, the other OCCAR programmes, which include the TIGER helicopter, and FSAF, ROLAND and HOT/MILAN missile systems programmes.
OCCAR's budgeting and accounting is in cash terms. On this basis, the UK's expected monetary contribution to OCCAR for the current phases of the BOXER and COBRA programmes, and our share of these costs is:
Programme UK contribution UK share (percentage) BOXER 40 32 COBRA 99 23 These figures relate only to contracts that are currently in place, and cover the UK's expected contribution towards both acquisition costs and OCCAR running costs for the relevant contract phase. OCCAR budgets for subsequent contract phases have still to be established.
OCCAR programme equipment budgets are calculated individually involving only OCCAR and the national participants concerned. The UK does not therefore have, nor do we need, visibility of all 573W OCCAR's budgets. However, it is intended that OCCAR will produce annual total cost figures that will quantify the overall scale of its operations each year.