Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, what subscriptions to (a) magazines and (b) television channels his Department funds; and what the annual cost is of each of those subscriptions.

(a) The Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) reviews all magazine subscriptions annually. Titles are provided electronically wherever possible to ensure efficiency and best value for money.

The FCO does not hold centrally separate data on magazine subscriptions. The majority of decisions on subscriptions are made by the UK’s Embassies and diplomatic posts and are funded from within their delegated budgets, or by individual departments within the FCO on the same basis. As a result comprehensive information on individual publications is not centrally recorded and collating this information would incur disproportionate cost. The following is the list of magazines provided centrally, in the majority of cases in electronic format, as of July 2014:

American Journal of International Law, Civil Wars, Critical Studies on Terrorism, International Peacekeeping, Turkish Studies, Common Market Law Review, Current Legal Problems, Human Rights Quarterly, ICSID Review - Foreign Investment Law Journal, International Community Law Review, International Journal of Marine and Coastal Law, Journal of International Humanitarian Legal Studies, Journal of Private International Law, Law and Practice of International Courts and Tribunals, Legal Issues of Economic Integration : Academic – Government, Modern Law Review, Ocean Development and International Law, Military Balance, Global Governance, Journal of Common Market Studies, Project Manager Today, Eurasian Geography and Economics, Journal of Democracy, Post-Soviet Affairs, RUSI Journal and Whitehall Papers, Africa Confidential, Comparative Strategy, Conflict Management and Peace Science, Conflict Security and Development, Economic and Political Weekly, Eye Spy Magazine, IISS Publications Combined, Intelligence and National Security, International Affairs, International Journal of Human Rights, International Journal of Intelligence and Counter Intelligence, Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding, Journal of Strategic Studies, Marston World Wide, Monde Diplomatique, Oxford Scholarly Authorities on International Law, Prospect, Science, Terrorism and Political Violence, Washington Quarterly, Inside Us Trade and World Trade, Jane's Defence News, Jane's Security News, Science Direct.

The breadth of magazines reflects the wide range of issues, events and crises the FCO’s staff around the world need to keep track of in order to protect Britain’s interests at home and overseas.

The total cost of these magazine subscriptions was £52,964. Total FCO expenditure on publications has fallen by 16% since 2010.

(b) The FCO does not spend any money on premium satellite television channels in the UK. The Digital television system used by the FCO is provided through our support agreement with FCO Services. It has been in place for five years and all 85 channels available are free to air and are therefore subscription free.

This does not capture subscriptions sourced locally overseas as it would incur disproportionate cost to obtain this information.