§ Mr. YeoTo ask the Secretary of State for Wales if he will make a statement on the(a) cost of and (b) number of visitors to each website operated by his Department is responsible in each year since its establishment. [107637]
§ Peter HainThe total operating cost—including the start up cost which cannot be separately identified—of the Wales Office website between 1 April 1998 and 1 July 1999 was £7,867.
The Wales Office was not charged for the running of its website between 1 July 1999 and 1 September 2000.
The operating cost of running the website—including the development of bilingual content between 1 September 2000 and 31 August 2001 was £5,699.
For the period between 1 September 2001 and 31 August 2002 the Wales Office was invoiced £1,600.
The Wales Office was also invoiced £1,600 for running of the website over the period between 1 September 2002 and 31 August 2003.
Unfortunately hits for the Welsh Office website between 1 April 1998 and 1 July 1999 are no longer available. Due to a technical fault at our service providers, we are also unable to provide hits for the Wales Office website from 1999–2000.
In 2001, the Wales Office website received 291,212 hits and 142,966 page impressions.
In 2002, the Wales Office website received 527,536 hits and 269,627 page impressions.
So far in this year, for the period 1 January 2003 to 31 March 2003, the Wales Office website has received 166,473 hits and 85,499 page impressions.