Chapter 1 - Finance

Departmental Resources

Overview

This section sets out Defence expenditure over time and includes breakdowns by expenditure group and budgetary area. Defence spending is compared to other areas of government. There are also tables estimating spending on equipment and Research and Development (R&D), the value of fixed assets and the external income earned by the MOD. The data is consistent with that in the MOD’s Resource Accounts which have been audited by the National Audit Office (NAO).

IMPORTANT NOTE: Please refer to the Resource Accounting & Budgeting section to view information relating to the introduction of the International Financial Reporting Standard (IFRS), the implementation of the Clear Line of Sight (CLoS) Alignment project and recent (and planned) accounting changes resulting from the publication of the Strategic Defence & Security Review (SDSR), which have led to presentational changes to the reporting of MOD accounts this year. These and other changes to the Government accounting framework will mean that the presentational challenges currently faced with reporting defence expenditure are likely to continue for the foreseeable future.

Section Contents

Table 1.1 presents changes in defence expenditure over time.

Table 1.2 examines expenditure on defence within the wider public expenditure framework.

Table 1.3 gives a breakdown of defence expenditure outturn by main area.

Table 1.4 presents estimates of MOD equipment expenditure broken out by the main categories of expenditure.

Table 1.5 presents the MOD resources by budgetary area.

Table 1.6 details net book values for MOD Fixed Assets by budgetary area.

Table 1.7 details the MOD's annual expenditure on R&D. This is broken down into intramural (within the department) and extramural (outside of the department) expenditure.

Table 1.8 provides a breakdown of the revenue earned by MOD split by Request for Resources category and income source.

Key Points

Defence Spending (Table 1.1)

  • In 2010/11, Defence Spending (Resource DEL plus Capital DEL minus Depreciation and Fixed Assets Written On/Off) totalled £39.5 billion.
  • In 2010/11, the outturn against the Departmental Expenditure Limits (DEL) was £48.5 billion. The Resource DEL accounted for £39.1 billion of the 2010/11 expenditure, whilst the Capital DEL accounted for £9.4 billion.

Comparison with other Government Departments (Table 1.2)

  • In 2010/11 Defence was estimated to be the fourth highest area of Government expenditure (Resource DEL plus Capital DEL plus AME) behind Work and Pensions, Health and Education. This continues the position of recent years.

Principal Headings of Defence Expenditure Outturn (Resources) (Table 1.3)

  • In 2010/11 the main area of Resource expenditure was personnel (£12.8 billion).
  • In 2010/11 the main area of Capital expenditure was Assets Under Construction (£6.6 billion), which largely consists of major weapons platforms under construction.

Estimated MOD Equipment Expenditure (Table 1.4)

  • Estimated MOD Equipment Expenditure for 2010/11 was nearly £14 billion. Around half of this spend was Capital Expenditure whilst a third was on Equipment Support and the remaining sixth was on Research & Development. This is similar to the spending pattern in previous years.

MOD Resources by Budgetary Area (Table 1.5)

  • Defence Equipment & Support had the largest outturn both for Resource and Capital DEL (£16.9 billion and £7.5 billion respectively).
  • Of the operational TLBs, Commander-in-Chief Land Forces had the highest outturn against the DEL in 2010/11 (£7.4 billion).

Fixed Assets (Table 1.6)

  • As at 31 March 2011, the total net value of MOD Fixed Assets was £115.6 billion. The largest category of assets was Single Use Military Equipment (£35.7 billion) which is broadly similar to previous years.
  • The value of land & buildings owned by the MOD totalled £22.7 billion.

Research & Development (Table 1.7)

  • In 2009/10, MOD net expenditure on R&D activity totalled £1.8 billion (down 12.0% in nominal terms on 2008/09), comprising £0.6 billion on Research and £1.2 billion on Development. Almost 90% of this was spent on R&D work undertaken outside of the department (extramurally).

External Income earned by MOD (Table 1.8)

  • In 2010/11 MOD earned just over £1.3 billion in revenue which is broadly in line with previous years.

Data Quality

A background quality report containing further information about the quality of methods and underlying data, along with the uses and limitation of these statistics can be found at: Background Quality Report - Departmental Resources Statistics with a separate quality report for Research and Development being found at: Background Quality Report - Research and Development Statistics.