To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions what the cost of maintaining the databases owned and managed by (a) his Department and (b) its agencies was in (i) 2006, (ii) 2007 and (iii) 2008. (256144)

The Department realigned its contracts with its major suppliers, EDS and BT, in 2005, which means the Department only pays for the IT services it consumes.

As the contract pricing mechanisms are based on the volumes of services consumed, it is not possible to separately identify the elements of the service costs that relate to the maintenance and management of databases.