Dr. ThomasTo ask the Secretary of State for Social Security what was the total identifiable expenditure on research by his Department in each year since 1979; what proportion was awarded on a customer-contractor basis; and what proportion of his total departmental budget was expended on research for each year.
350W
§ Mrs. Gillian ShephardSocial Security became a separate Department in 1988. Research and development by DSS, all of which is managed on the customer-contractor principle, is financed through the social security research budget. For 1989–90, the total expenditure on research and development was £937,000. Information on the overall DSS budget for 1989–90 is not yet available. For 1988–89, the total research and development expenditure was £636,000, forming 0.0013 per cent. of the overall DSS budget.
Information for earlier years has been published in the "Annual Review of Government Funded Research and Development", a copy of which is available in the Library.