Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, what assessment he has made of the effect on the output of the BBC Monitoring Service of relinquishing the ownership of Caversham Park; what estimate he has made of the annual running costs of Caversham Park; how many BBC Monitoring staff he estimates will leave the organisation on the closure of Caversham Park; what the estimated extra costs, per staff member, will be of (a) London weighting, (b) commuting from Berkshire to Central London and (c) relocation; who the recipients of any funds derived from the sale of Caversham Park will be; and if he will make a statement.

The output which HMG expects from BBC Monitoring is set down in a revised Monitoring Agreement, which is currently under negotiation with the BBC. This agreement will cover the next eleven years of the Charter period from January 2017. I will place copies of the new Monitoring Agreement, when signed, in the Libraries of both Houses. The move from Caversham, and related financial and personnel aspects, are matters for the BBC.