To ask the Secretary of State for Defence if he will list the total amounts paid by his Department in respect of headquarter contracts to United Kingdom-based contracts in each of the three years to 31 March 1991.

The Ministry of Defence paid the following total amounts to United Kingdom-based contractors for the financial years 1988–89 to 1990–91:

	£ million
1988–89	7,776·38
1989–90	8,232·57
1990–91	9,132·48

Centrally held records do not differentiate between payments made under headquarters contracts and other types of payments. The precise information requested could be assembled only at disproportionate cost.

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence if he will list the precise amounts paid to each of the 10 contractors which received the largest shares of headquarter contracts awarded by his Department in each of the three years to 31 March 1991.

The 10 contractors that received the largest payments from my Department in each of the years specified were:

	£ million
1988–89
British Aerospace plc	1,085·94
The General Electric Co. plc	902·04
Vickers Shipbuilding and Engineering Consortium plc	409·31
Rolls-Royce plc	329·20
The Plessey Co. plc	308·74
Devonport Management Ltd.	236·79
Ferranti plc	209·71
Thorn EMI plc	157·95
FKI Babcock plc	151·08
GKN plc	131·88
1989–90
BAe plc	926·39
GEC plc	785·43
VSEL Consortium plc	561·88
Rolls-Royce plc	319·73
Devonport Management plc	277·22
Plessey plc	248·44
Ferranti International plc	220·96
FKI Babcock plc	171·54
Thorn EMI plc	163·11
Westland Group plc	138·30
1990–91
BAe plc	996·29
GEC plc	799·92
VSEL Consortium plc	591·35
Rolls-Royce plc	399·86
The Weir Group plc	293·36
GEC Siemens plc	246·13
Ferranti International plc	198·05
Babcock International Group plc	183·90
Thorn EMI plc	165·67
Vickers plc	154·48

The proportion of these sums represented by headquarters contracts could only be identified at disproportionate cost.