To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs pursuant to the answer of 12 March 2009, Official Report, column 625W, on departmental public expenditure, what activities have been (a) delayed in 2008-09 and (b) identified for delay in 2009-10 at embassies in (i) Amman, (ii) Lagos, (iii) New Delhi and (iv) Brussels. (267824)

[holding answer 27 March 2009]: The posts concerned received over £4 million of Overseas Price Movements (OPM) mechanism uplifts in 2008-09 in order to maintain the purchasing power of their budget and to ensure they could deliver their strategic objectives without delaying activity.

However, in some of these posts there were some delays to low priority capital expenditure, including accommodation improvements, as we did not provide OPM for capital expenditure.

Work on 2009-10 budget setting has recently concluded and posts are currently finalising their activity plans against their resource allocation.