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continuing foothold in the Pacific; and St Helena/Ascension
because of its importance as a link in the UK's communications
network.
7 An accurate assessment of the movement in benefits and costs
since 1973 is difficult. Bermuda continues to provide defence
facilities of value both nationally and to NATO. St Helena/
Ascension has an increased value to the UK because of its role in
Falklands re-supply and its use by the US as a rocket testing
facility. None of the other nine offers any particular benefit to the UK though the political alignment of the Caribbean region
is important to NATO since it lies on a reinforcement route in
times of tension. The main current financial costs remain aid
and defence. The cost to the aid budget of the nine territories
rose from about £4.1m in 1973 to about £19m in 1985/86 (half of
it in St Helena). In real terms this represents an increase of about 40%, and as a proportion of the total UK aid budget a rise
from 0.6% to 1.5%. Though these costs are planned to rise
further and are high in per capita terms (£150 per head in the
nine dependencies against about £1 in sub-Saharan Africa) they remain relatively small and affordable.
8
The same is true of the current defence costs. For the nine
dependencies the full cost to the MOD of providing for their defence was between £2m and £3m in 1973, and the directly
attributable "extra costs" were smaller than this. The
calculations were admittedly based on a somewhat arbitrary opportionment of MOD costs to the dependencies. Costs will have increased in real terms since 1973 in line with the general rise in defence costs and because additional expenditure on a small scale has become necessary, for example in the Caribbean, in
recognition of the security needs of small states following the
Grenada affair. [Defence Department providing figures]. As with aid however the current defence costs of the dependencies do not
present an undue burden.
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We are therefore driven to the conclusion similar to that
reached in the 1973 review - that the main burden of holding onto
the dependencies is the potential additional cost of providing
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