Question to the Cabinet Office:

To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, how many buildings owned by his Department have been sold in each year since 2010.

The Cabinet Office sold the Freehold of 53 Parliament Street for £5.37m in March 2010.

The Government Property Unit, based in the Cabinet Office, has helped the Government exit over 1500 buildings, including over 800 freehold properties, in this Parliament. This has generated over £1.4 billion in receipts and achieved cumulative, gross run rate savings of over £600 million per year against a 2009/10 baseline.

If a previous Government had done more to dispose of unnecessary properties, the deficit which we inherited in 2010 would have been less.