To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs pursuant to the oral answer from Lord Malloch-Brown to Lord Hannay of Chiswick of 20 April 2009, Official Report, House of Lords, column 1248, what changes are to be made to the (a) number of and (b) level of funding for civilian secondees to conflict prevention and peacekeeping operations; what funding was allocated to civilian secondees in 2008-09; how many UK civilian secondees to each (i) country and (ii) operation there were in that year; and if he will make a statement. (271037)

In financial year (FY) 2009-10, the Government will provide 80 civilian and police secondees to discretionary, international peacekeeping operations compared with 127 in FY 2008-09. The following table sets out the number of civilian and police secondees by country and operation in FY 2008-09 and FY 2009-10.

In FY 2008-09, civilian secondees to discretionary peacekeeping missions were funded from the Government’s Peacekeeping Budget. We cannot provide an exact figure for civilian and police deployment costs in 2008-09. However, we estimate it to be some £16 million. In FY 2009-10, all discretionary peacekeeping activity will be funded from the £171 million available for discretionary conflict prevention, stabilisation and peacekeeping activity, as set out in my written statement to the House of 25 March 2009, Official Report, column 17-18WS. It is possible that further resources, for example from the reserve of that discretionary fund, will be made available during the course of the year depending on priorities.