§ Mr. CousinsTo ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry pursuant to the answer of 15 March 2004,Official Report, column 64W, on European Union Standard Funds, what actual expenditure was against those allocations for each year between 2000 and 2003. [185595]
§ Jacqui SmithEuropean Structural Fund expenditure under the 2000–06 programmes is monitored on an annual basis. Under current regulations, each year's allocation has to be spent by the end of the second year following the year of allocation.
Due to the late start of the Objective 2 programmes, only the Objective 1 and 3 programmes were required to spend their 2000 allocations by the end of 2002. For the UK Objective 1 programmes a total of £622.3 million had to be spent and for Objective 3 the figure was £402.1 million. These overall targets were achieved. The targets for the end of 2003 included both the 2000 and 2001 allocations for the Objective 2 programmes. A total of £3,150 million had to be spent and this figure was surpassed by £308 million.