§ Dr. CableTo ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs how many copies of his Department's annual report were printed in each year since 1997; how many were sold in each year; and what the(a) publication costs and (b) sales revenue were. [183885]
§ Mr. StrawProduction of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office's Departmental Report 1 April 2003 to 31 March 2004 cost the Department £24,453. Due to new printing arrangements, these costs to the Department are 25 per cent. lower than for the 2003 Report. Other costs are met by the publisher, The Stationery Office Ltd. (TSO).
1,900 copies of this year's report were printed of which 1,350 are distributed internally at a price which covers printing costs and 550 copies are retained by TSO. The report is also available free of charge on the FCO website: www.fco.gov.uk. I refer the hon. Member to the reply I gave to the hon. Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb) on 6 May 2004, Official Report, column 1731W, for further details.
TSO does not divulge its sales revenues, which depend on the extent to which it chooses to sell copies at a discount. Nor does TSO provide the total number of copies printed in previous years. However, the number of copies sold by TSO, and the number supplied to the FCO for internal use, is listed in the table. Statistics for the 1997 edition are not available.
Edition Copies sold by TSO Copies supplied to FCO 1998 626 1,682 1999 542 1,527 2000 513 1,438 2001 564 1,447 2002 525 1,412 2003 426 1,340 2004 1315 1,350 1Interim figure. The sales profile for previous years indicates that TSO can expect to sell a further 95 copies, bringing the total for the year to approximately 410.