§ This is a convenient opportunity for me to refer to suggestions which have been made by some hon. Members that, in some form or other, our annual Budget should be accompanied by a national balance-sheet or some form of capital assets account or the like. I am not unsympathetic, as I hope I have already shown, to giving the fullest information to the House in relation to financial matters. It is, however, evident, I think, that the State could not produce anything like the exact accounts of a business undertaking. We are incurring the cost of the war for 950 intangible reasons and not for material ends. Even in the more limited sphere of things with money values, there are serious difficulties in attempting to assess the position to-day. What post-war value, for instance, could now be placed on such capital items as land, buildings and the plant which the State has acquired? It would not bear any necessary relation to their costs. What matters is the earning capacity of each asset after the war; and who can say now what that earning capacity will be? These are the kinds of matters which render many of the suggestions made impracticable—at any rate for the time being.
Having said that, I would not rule out the idea that lies behind the whole matter. I expressed during the Debate on our post-war economic and financial problems the belief that we should be wise to develop to the greatest possible extent the service of statistical information. We ought to have not only financial statistics of the kind which we now have and which have been so greatly extended by the White Paper, but as full information as we can get on such matters as domestic production and private investments in capital assets; and an account of these, say, in the form of a further White Paper might well accompany our future annual Budgets. We should thus have another important State paper which would give us a much wider account, and a better picture of our affairs, and which we could continue to build up and improve, so as to enable the House and the country to have a clearer estimation of our capabilities and potentialities.
§ The Committee will appreciate that a publication of this kind could not be contemplated during the war, for we certainly could not publish, for example, figures of our current war production; but, in the interval, we will endeavour to make the best progress we can in the very great amount of preparatory work which will have to be done. I will only add two things. The first is that in order to accomplish what we purpose we shall need the co-operation of all our industries and that they should, as I believe they will, recognise that the time and labour employed and supplied by them will be well worth while; and, secondly, that when we have this further information we must not indulge in wishful thinking. Statistics are no substitutes for assets, 951 and accountancy will not take the place of economic activities and endeavour.