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Freedom of Information disclosure - F2005/92
Date of Release 3 May 2005.
Costs of military support for development assistance
No UK official assistance (OA) or official development assistance (ODA) is spent on defence. Defence spending cannot be classified as ODA or OA.
On occasion, UK armed forces assist in providing humanitarian assistance in response to a disaster. All core operating costs of the armed services involved in humanitarian assistance are over and above the aid contribution and are therefore not included in the UK government statements on funds provided for aid.
In these cases DFID is not charged for normal Ministry of Defence operating costs, but only the additional marginal costs of deployment. Occasional payment for specific activities, as in the examples outlined below, is included in the overall statistics for humanitarian assistance.
In the recent Indian Ocean earthquake-tsunami disaster, the UK’s contribution includes an estimated cost of £2.5 million for the marginal costs of the deployment of UK military assets. This estimate is based on the additional marginal costs of using the ships HMS Chatham and RFA Diligence to deliver emergency assistance, plus the use of RAF air transport, additional personnel costs such as a local overseas allowance and marginal running costs including spares and communications charges. These costs compare favourably with the commercial options that are always considered before deploying the armed services.
In the Caribbean hurricanes response last September, the use of Royal Naval vessels in the relief effort did not give rise to marginal costs as the vessels were already deployed in the affected area. Since the deployment of the Royal Naval vessels, DFID has funded through the MOD, the costs (value £13,000) of replacing relief items carried by the vessels that were delivered to affected populations immediately following the hurricanes.
The other occasions for which marginal costs have arisen are:
- Mozambique Floods (£1.94 million) for the use of four Puma helicopters, the Royal Naval auxiliary RFA St George, four Sea- King helicopters, an RAF mobile air movement team and a specialist naval communications team;
- Humanitarian assistance activities during the Kosovo crisis (£3.75 million). These included a UK military attachment to the United Nations Mine Action Coordination Centre to support the coordination of mine clearance, 8 medical evacuation flights and the delivery of humanitarian assistance;
- MOD transported UK search and rescue teams to the site of the Gujarat earthquake in 2001(Marginal cost of £98,000).
The details of UK Government development assistance expenditure are given in DFID’s publications, Statistics on International Development and its predecessor British Aid Statistics. Both these publications are in the public domain and the most recent edition of Statistics on International Development can be accessed on DFID’s Website at
www.dfid.gov.uk.
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