Department for International Trade: Official Hospitality

(asked on 22nd April 2020) - View Source

Question to the Department for International Trade:

To ask the Secretary of State for International Trade, how much her Department spent on other catering and hospitality costs in each of the last three accounting years.


Answered by
Conor Burns Portrait
Conor Burns
This question was answered on 28th April 2020

The Department for International Trade (DIT) has spent the amounts listed below for catering and hospitality in the financial years 2017/2018, 2018/2019 and 2019/2020. This cost includes both the UK and overseas.


The breakdown is as follows:

Financial Year Amount
April 2017 - March 2018£118,579.00
April 2018 - March 2019£158,236.00
April 2019 – March 2020£207,652.07
Total £484,467.07

Staff at the DIT are located across more than one hundred countries and as we prepare to leave the EU, our ministers and DIT staff regularly travel overseas to build relationships with key global trading partners and the Department provides hospitality or diplomatic entertainment on trade issues.

This includes through the 14 trade working groups we have set up across 21 countries to advance the UK's trade and investment relationships and scope out the potential for future free trade agreements. The figures include overseas spending.

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