§ Mr. Austin Mitchellasked the Secretary of State for Defence what is the cost per head per person supplied in the case of in-house catering in the Army and Royal Air Force, respectively, having regard to the total cost of maintaining such in-house facilities, including all overheads and indirect costs: and whether he is satisfied that a similar service could not be supplied at lower cost by private contractors.
§ Mr. StanleyIt is not possible to break down the cost by service, but the full cost, including all overheads, of catering for officers and men in an average United Kingdom mess is estimated to have been £4.52 per head on average per day in 1982–83. Some use of private contractors in static non-operational messes is already being made and further extensions of this practice are being considered.
§ Mr. Austin Mitchellasked the Secretary of State for Defence how many persons are engaged in cooking and catering for the Army and the Royal Air Force, respectively; what are the numbers in each rank; what is the total cost of maintaining this establishment; and what proportion of the catering used by each service is supplied by these in-house facilities.
§ Mr. StanleyThe information is as follows:
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Numbers ARMY (a) Officers Brigadier 2 Colonel 4 Lt. Colonel 17 Major 41 Captain 88 Subaltern 16 Total 168 (b) Service personnel WO1 75 WO2 207 S/Sergeant 120 Sergeant 639 Corporal 981 L/Corporal 1,537 Private 1,471 Total 5,050 (c) Civilians* 3,264 ROYAL AIR FORCE (a) Officers Group Captain 2 Wing Commander 4 Squadron Leader 34 Flight Lieutenant 29 Flying Officer 37 Total 106
Numbers (b) Service personnel Warrant Officer 126 Flight/Sergeant 170 Sergeant 438 Corporal 1,089 Senior Aircraftsman 2,372 Total 4,195 (c) Civilians* 3,405 * Excludes locally engaged civilians overseas, for whom figures are not readily available. The total staff costs of these facilities are about £137 million. In the Army about 99 per cent. of catering is supplied by in-house facilities while the figure for the RAF is about 96 per cent.