Foreign and Commonwealth Office: Expenditure Limits (Hansard, 19 February 2001)

§ Baroness Scotland of Asthal

Subject to Parliamentary approval of the necessary Supplementary Estimate for Class VII Vote 1, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office Departmental. Expenditure Limit for 2001–01 will be increased by £42,289,000 from £1,210,333,000 to £1,252,622,000 and the running cost limit has been increased by £1,797,000 from £531,982,000 to £533,779,000. This is the net effect of:

(i) a transfer of £16,000 to the Ministry of Defence (Class VI, Vote 2), in respect of our final contribution to the grant-in-aid to the Atlantic Council of the UK;
(ii) an increase of £5,441,000 in respect of an adjustment for overseas price movements;
(iii) a transfer of £ 1,920,000 to the Cabinet Office (Class XVII, Vote 2) for drugs assistance programmes;
(iv) a transfer of £880,000 to the Cabinet Office (Class XVII, Vote 2) for revisions to charging regime;
(v) an increase in both running costs and appropriations-in-aid of £1,248,000 in respect of increased receipts from OGDs;
(vi) a transfer of £32,000 from BBC monitoring service to the Cabinet Office (Class XVII, Vote 2);
(vii) an increase in both running costs and appropriations-in-aid of £5,300,000 to reflect an increase in our VAT recovery forecast;
(viii) a decrease of £5,500,000 in both capital expenditure and A-in-A for FCO Estates Rationalisation;
(xi) a PES transfer of £1,500,000 to the MoD representing the FCO's contribution to the enhanced package for the Sierra Leone Army;
(x) a PES transfer of £168,000 from the war pensions agency to cover the costs of medical examinations for overseas pensioners;
(ix) additional provision of £39,808,000 on Section B for UK contributions to United Nations Missions in the former Yugoslavia (includes UK Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo) and the former Soviet Union, United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (Iraq), United Nations Iraq-Kuwait Observer Mission, United Nations Mission for the Referendum on Western Sahara, United Nations Transitional Authority in East Timor, United Nations Mission in Sierra Leone, United Nations Observer Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo, United Nations Mission in Ethiopia and Eritrea, United Nations International Criminal Tribunals for Yugoslavia and Rwanda, Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe, European Community Monitoring Mission and Western European Union Police Mission in Albania. This is partially offset by an increase of £344,000 in appropriations-in-aid in respect of non-baseline peacekeeping and by £10,761,000 from Section E, General VAT Refunds;
(xii) the supplementary estimate is also required to note an increase in Section C, to reflect PES transfers of £46,000 to the Cabinet Office (Class XVII, Vote 2) and £52,000 to the Cabinet Office (Class XVII, Vote 1);
(xiii) the supplementary estimate is also required to note an increase of £1,998,000 of Section D, in respect of an adjustment for overseas price movement for the British Council.