Government overspending of more than $23 million was approved by MPs in the House of Assembly last night.

The extra expenditure last year included a $15 million subsidy for King Edward VII Memorial Hospital and $3.8 million on salaries, back pay and pension and health insurance contributions.

There was also an unexpected $2.6 million needed for war veterans' pensions and medical claims and $670,000 spent on transferring the National Office for Seniors and the Physically Challenged from the Ministry of Culture to the Ministry of Health.

Those unbudgeted amounts — totalling more than $22 million — came out of the Government's current account, while another $960,000 from the capital development fund was spent on work at L.F. Wade International Airport and improvements to Pender Road in Dockyard.

Finance Minister Paula Cox presented the Supplementary Estimate 2009/10 (No. 1) to the House, telling MPs that it was "in main a combination of under-budgeted and additional expenditure items".