To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform what IT contracts his Department holds; and what the (a) length and (b) cost of each contract is. (187639)

[holding answer 21 February 2008]: The core Department has one main information technology contract which provides desk top services and a variety of additional extended services. This is a private finance initiative (PFI) agreement awarded to Fujitsu Services in 1998 and the agreement commenced in April 1999 and runs for 15 years. The spend up until March 2008 will be £370 million and it is estimated that a further £163 million will be spent up to the end of the agreement.

In 2005 the Department awarded a Competed Services Framework Arrangement to six suppliers to enable an element of competition for IT projects and a small number of IT contracts have been awarded through this arrangement and other framework arrangements available to government. The current contracts are as follows: