§ Mr. AllenTo ask the hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed, representing the House of Commons Commission, for each of the conferences since 1979, what expenditure has been incurred for the attendance by the House of Commons representatives at the meetings of presiding officers of national parliaments of the EC.
§ Mr. Beith[holding answer 20 December 1991]Since 1979 seven conferences of the Speakers or presiding officers of parliaments of EC countries have been held: in 1981, 1983, 1985, 1987, 1989 and 1991. In 1987 an additional extraordinary meeting was convened in Berlin to mark that city's 750th anniversary.
As the Fees Office accounting system for those years did not separate out the costs attributable to these events, it has not been possible without disproportionate effort to search out figures for them all. It has been possible, however, to extract the costs for the conferences held in Madrid in 1989 and Berlin in 1991. They were £1,298.78 and £1,502.48, respectively.
New accounting methods being introduced into the Department of Finance and Administration should allow information of this kind to be more accessible in future.