My right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Defence (Des Browne) has made the following Written Ministerial Statement.
Subject to parliamentary approval of the necessary supplementary estimate, the Ministry of Defence departmental expenditure limits (DEL) will be increased by £1,247,750,000 from £35,594,551,000 to £36,842,301,000. Within the DEL change, the impact on resources and capital are as set out in the following table:
Change New DEL Voted Non-Voted Voted Non-voted Total Resource 2,419,624 -200,000 36,857,168 83,088 36,940,256 Near-Cash in RDEL 597,750 30,989 24,417,425 511,932 24,929,357 Capital 428,000 - 8,119,626 744 8,120,370 Depreciation* -1,599,874 200,000 -8,218,325 - -8,218,325 Total 1,247,750 - 36,758,469 83,832 36,842,301
* Depreciation, which forms part of resource DEL, is excluded from the total DEL since capital DEL includes capital spending and to include depreciation of those assets would lead to double counting.
The changes to the resource and capital elements of the DEL arise from:
the take-up of the department's end-year indirect resource flexibility totalling £1,621,874,000 to reflect latest TLB forecasts of outturn of indirect resource expenditure;
an increase in the RfR2 of £566,000,000 direct resource DEL and £380,650,000 capital DEL to reflect the forecast costs of peacekeeping operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and Balkans;
the transfer of £424,000,000 indirect resource DEL from RfRI to RfR2 to cover depreciation, cost of capital and impairment forecasts with no overall impact on DEL;
a transfer out of £750,000 to the Department for Business, Enterprise and Rregulatory Reform;
the take-up of capital end-year flexibility (EYF) of £40,000,000 resulting from the sale of QinetiQ in 2005-06, as agreed with Treasury;
drawdown of £200,000,000 from the department's (unvoted) unallocated resource provision to reflect the increased (voted) indirect resource DEL forecast of outturn for RfR1 with no overall impact on DEL; and
resource and capital transfers in from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in respect of contributions to the Balkans Conflict Prevention Pool net costs, the Global Rest of the World Conflict Prevention Pool costs, and Afghanistan capital costs of £39,850,000.
The changes to resource DEL and capital DEL will lead to an increased net cash requirement of £894,351,000.
I am placing a copy of the Ministry of Defence Votes A 2008-09 in the Library of the House.