Departmental Expenditure (Hansard, 22 May 2003)

§ Mr. Bercow
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions what his estimate is of the expenditure of his Department on newspapers, magazines and periodicals in 2002. [106312]

§ Mr. Nicholas Brown
The Department's total expenditure on newspapers, magazines and periodicals in 2002 was approximately £173,000. Subscriptions may also be taken at local level and information about these is not collected centrally.

§ Mr. Bercow
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions what plans he has to reduce his Department's underspend in 2003–04 from that of 2002–03. [112769]

§ Maria Eagle
No underspend is currently planned for 2003–04.
The estimated resource underspend reported in Table 2.4 of the Public Expenditure Statistical Analyses, published on 6 May 2003, is £201 million and is 2.7 per cent. of the final provision. This principally reflects lower than planned activity on Labour Market Programmes.
The reported Capital underspend of £53 million principally reflects slippage on the departmental change programme.
Current spending plans are set out in Table 1 of the Departmental Report.
The Department is utilising all 2002–03 underspends to support spending plans over the SR2002 period.