To ask Her Majesty's Government further to the Written Answer on 28 April by the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, Huw Irranca-Davies (Official Report, House of Commons, col. 1162W), whether the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs intends to raise income by renting out part of the 85 per cent unused capacity on its Unix servers or the 94 per cent unused on its Wintel servers. [HL4659]

Defra outsourced IT service provision (which included transfer of server ownership) to IBM in 2004. Under this contract, the department purchases access to applications services hosted on servers provided and managed by IBM. Therefore we are not in a position to consider raising income by renting out capacity on them.