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Dept of Trade and Industry

Answer

Mr. Page: To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry what percentage of UK funds directed towards the CERN project is being treated as capital against resource. [139061] Ms Hewitt: At this point in time, the UK subscription to CERN is not formally divided into capital and resource and is currently regarded as resource expenditure. This is an area of discussion between HM Treasury, the Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council and my department. It should be noted that CERN is currently in the middle of a 12 year, è3.2 billion project to construct the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), which will be the world's most powerful particle accelerator. Its expected commissioning date is April 2007. Whilst capital spend at CERN will fall to almost zero in 2007 when the LHC machine is completed, CERN have negotiated a loan to facilitate the expenditure profile with a repayment schedule to 2011. This will mean that a proportion of the UK subscription will be used for capital repayment to 2011. In parallel, as the operations and exploitation phase begins, an increasing fraction of the UK subscription will be devoted to meeting the associated operating costs. The following table of capital expenditure is estimated by taking the UK's share of CERN's capital spending plans. UK CERN subscription and UK share of CERN's capital expenditure plans £ million1 _________________________________________________________________________________________________. 2000-1 2001-2 2002-3 2003-4 2004-5 2005-6 2006-7 2007-8 UK CERN subscription 69.1 66.2 68.9 71.5 71.4 72.1 72.1 72.1 UK share of CERN capital 17.3 48.3 50.3 50.8 48.6 43.3 21.6 7.2 spend plans (percentage) 25 73 73 71 68 60 30 10 _________________________________________________________________________________________________. 1The figures are in pounds and UK financial years, but the subscription is actually set in Swiss Francs and calendar years, and also varies according to the UK's net national income in comparison to that of other Member States. The figures for 2003-4 and onwards are latest estimates. In addition, the UK is supporting the construction and operation of a number of experiments at CERN as part of its domestic particle physics budget. These consist of large pieces of capital equipment for CERN but the expenditure is counted as resource for HM Treasury purposes. The LHC capital element of this funding has been estimated by identifying the contributions towards the detectors and similar items and is shown in the following table: UK domestic expenditure on CERN experiments (£million) _________________________________________________________________________________________________. 2000-1 2001-2 2002-3 2003-4 2004-5 2005-6 2006-7 2007-8 UK domestic expenditure on 13.3 17.4 23.4 27.0 27.8 24.2 23.7 20.6 CERN instruments LHC Capital element 11.2 14.8 19.0 19.1 16.8 12.0 8.0 2.2 (percentage) 84 85 81 71 60 50 34 10 _________________________________________________________________________________________________. 1The figures are in pounds and UK financial years, but the subscription is actually set in Swiss Francs and calendar years, and also varies according to the UK's net national income in comparison to that of other Member States. The figures for 2003-4 and onwards are latest estimates.

Secondary information

Type

Written question

Reference

139061; 413 c1420W;413 c1416W

Session

2002-03

Subjects

Capital investment Finance Laboratories Nuclear physics CERN Particle accelerators

Contains statistics

Yes

Link

View this Written question on www.publications.parliament.uk