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Written question asked by Chris Ruane (Labour) on Monday, 30 January 2006, in the House of Commons. It was due for an answer on Wednesday, 1 February 2006. It was answered by Lord Reid of Cardowan (Labour) on Monday, 6 February 2006 on behalf of the Ministry of Defence.

Iraq

Question
To ask the Secretary of State for Defence what the net additional cost of operations in Iraq expressed as a percentage of (a) the total defence budget and (b) total government spending was in each year since 2002–03.
Answer

The costs of specific conflict prevention activities (including security and peace-building tasks) are voted for separately by Parliament, through either the HM Treasury Reserve or the Conflict Prevention Pools. As such, these funds do not form part of the Defence budget and cannot be expressed as a percentage of it.The following table sets out the MOD budget, cost of operations in Iraq, and Government's Total Managed Expenditure for the three years 2002–03 to 2004–05.

Financialyear MOD budget (£ billion) Cost of operationsin Iraq(£ billion) Government total managed expenditure (£ billion) Cost of operations in Iraq as percentage of Government TME
2002–03 29.3 0.847 417.970 0.20
2003–04 30.9 1.311 455.233 0.29
2004–05 29.7 0.910 487.300 0.19

Secondary information

Type
Written question
Reference
48024; 442 c826-7W;442 c826-7W
Session
2005-06
Subjects
Costs Expenditure Iraq Peacekeeping operations
Contains statistics
Yes
Link
View this Written question on www.publications.parliament.uk