Asked by: Paul Girvan (Democratic Unionist Party - South Antrim)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, how much funding has been provided to the Met Office in each of the last five years.
Answered by Sam Gyimah
The Met Office is a trading fund and provides weather and climate services under contract to a range of government and commercial customers. Revenue from these services in each of the last five years is shown in the following table.
| 2016/17 | 2015/16 | 2014/15 | 2013/14 | 2012/13 |
Total Revenue (£’000) | 226,827 | 227,480 | 220,795 | 208,118 | 204,929 |
(of which) Government services (£’000) | 194,790 | 195,710 | 187,375 | 175,453 | 171,760 |
The majority of the Met Office's Government services relate to the Met Office's public task, its role as the UK's National Meteorological Service and its support of the Ministry of Defence and other Government departments in respect of weather and climate related services.
In addition, the Met Office has received grant funding from Government in the last five years, for capital investment in its underpinning infrastructure covering High Performance Computing, volcanic ash monitoring and space weather forecasting.
| 2016/17 | 2015/16 | 2014/15 | 2013/14 | 2012/13 |
Total grants (£’000) | 47,000 | 50,000 | – | 3,191 | 2,234 |