Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, how many contracts his Department has held with private security companies in each year since 2008; what the cost of those contracts was; and if he will make a statement.

The Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) continues to have a number of centrally awarded security contracts with private security companies (PSCs), covering our key conflict zone requirements including Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Somalia and Yemen.

These contracts are widely used by other Government Departments and continue to be retendered every 3-5 years. The current contracts are:
Afghanistan – guarding
Iraq (Baghdad) – guarding
Iraq (Erbil) – guarding
Libya – guarding
Somalia – guarding
Yemen – guarding
Various conflict zones – Overseas Security Managers and Analysts

Expenditure against these contracts is as detailed below:
2008/2009 £52.5 million
2009/2010 £49.5 million
2010/2011 £41.6 million
2011/2012 £50.4 million
2012/2013 £48.9 million
2013/2014 £45.4 million

These details are limited to these contracts and do not include local contracts let by our overseas Posts. Data for these could only be collected at disproportionate cost.