To ask the Secretary of State for Defence what his Department's total expenditure was on payments to welfare associations, as listed in his Department's resource account code hierarchy, in near cash terms, in each financial year since 2000-01. (173723)

The total resource costs against this resource account code are set out in the following table:

Near cash expenditure is not separately identified in the final resource accounts or the centrally held supporting records. Total resource costs have therefore been provided; however it is unlikely that there are any non-cash costs attributed to the expenditure items which would result in the near cash expenditure being different from the resource expenditure.

There is an apparent tailing off of expenditure against this resource account code, this is not as a result of MOD ceasing to provide funds for these activities; the expenditure is now reported against a different resource account code and is not separately identifiable.