Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, which periodicals and newspapers his Department subscribes to; how many of each such periodical his Department acquires; and what the cost of subscribing to such periodicals was in 2014.

The Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) reviews subscriptions to newspapers and periodicals annually. I have placed a list of the periodicals and newspapers provided centrally in 2014 in the library of the House. The vast majority of those titles listed are provided in electronic format. The breadth of journals 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 periodical subscriptions provided centrally in 2013-14 was £66,469.

Electronic copies of newspapers and journals, procured as a single FCO-wide subscription, are available to all FCO staff via our Digital Library.

Access to periodicals and newspapers procured centrally extends to all of the UK’s 267 embassies and diplomatic posts overseas as well as the FCO’s offices in London. Other subscriptions taken out by embassies and diplomatic posts or by individual departments within the FCO are funded from delegated budgets. As a result, comprehensive information on individual publications not procured centrally is not recorded and collating this information would incur disproportionate cost.