domestic policy reasons should be identified and reported to the House. It has been the practice to report on the reasons for adjustments to expenditure targets in the Statements on the Defence Estimates and in the Public Expenditure White Papers-see for example Table 2 of Annex B to the 1972 Statement, Table 1 of Annex A to the 1973 Statement and paragraph 4 on page 19 of Cmnd. 5519. In addition the Department has undertaken to publish in the Statement on the Defence Estimates details of expenditure incurred for "social" purposes on married accommodation, education and health (see Table 4 of Annex A to the 1975 Statement). In the light of the Committee's views, the Government is considering ways of providing further information.
41. The Committee also commented that the actual savings which may result from the review proposals compared with LTC 1974 could vary considerably from those estimated (Conclusion 16).
42. An estimate of the savings produced by the Defence Review can only be made by comparing the most up-to-date costing of planned defence expenditure programmes as they stood before the Review with the programmes as they stand after the Review decisions. The costings of the former programme were based on the best information available at the time of the Review and allowed for the full cost of meeting defence commitments as they then existed, including a number of additional costs, such as the extra cost of peace-keeping in Northern Ireland, which were referred to in the 1975 Public Expenditure White Paper (Cmnd 5519), but for which financial provision had by convention only been included in the targets of the first year of the PESC period. As a result of the Defence Review, the Government is determined to ensure that the savings required to bring total defence expenditure down to agreed financial targets will be made.
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