§ I would call attention at this stage to the further special White Paper which I am issuing to-day. The extensive information which I published in the White Papers in 1941 and 1942 was warmly welcomed and approved both inside and outside Parliament. They are rightly regarded as important State documents, and they make a considerable and valuable addition to our official statistics. The very magnitude of our borrowing programme alone makes it most desirable that we should have adequate statistical information; for example, it is most important that we should know how far the sums we are borrowing are ultimately being made available out of the current national income. We are building up, amending and revising these statistics, as we find better approaches to the problems involved and are able to devise more exact methods of estimation. Certain revisions have been made, for example, in the previous estimate of the national income and of personal savings, which will be found in full in the White Paper. We have been able to expand the information given in previous issues, as, for example, on the main heads of personal expenditure on consumption, and an index of prices applicable to such consumption has also been provided. One table has been discontinued until we can obtain a better basis for our estimate.
§ There is an interesting series of figures which show how the large increase in personal incomes over the pre-war level has been disposed of. Table II shows that between 1938 and 1942 the gross total of such income, before payment of any taxation, increased by £2,235,000,000. Provision for direct taxation took £713,000,000 of the increase, and £757,000,000 was saved. Expenditure on consumption increased therefore by £765,000,000, of which about half was due to higher indirect taxation, mainly, of course, on liquor and tobacco.
§ The annual figures show a steady rise in personal savings, excluding provision for taxation accrued but not paid. Such savings are estimated to have increased from £628,000,000 in 1940 to £704,000,000 in 1941, and £891,000,000 in 1942. On the other hand, the fact appears that, of 949 the increase in personal incomes during 1942, a greater proportion was spent on consumption than of the increase during 1941. The increase in expenditure on consumption, excluding the corresponding increase of indirect taxation, was actually about one-third higher than the increase during 1941. If we allow for the increase in prices as set out in Table C of the White Paper, the volume of goods and services purchased, which had fallen during 1941, remained stationary in 1942. We ought not to be content with that. I think it will be generally agreed that there is still an appreciable margin of personal expenditure on non-essentials which can and should be curtailed.
§ There is one other general comment I should like to make in this connection. The main figures relate to the ultimate sources from which the nation has been able to place funds at the disposal of the Government for the prosecution of the war. The White Paper is not primarily concerned with the form in which the funds are, in fact, made available to the Exchequer. Besides ensuring that the sources of our borrowings are basically sound, the Government obviously want to borrow in the forms least likely to cause embarrassment in the future. Thus, the figures of personal savings cover such savings in all forms, whether invested, or left in the bank, or kept at home or in the pocket in notes—of the last of which there are far too many. While we are glad to see all these personal savings increasing, I must say that it is most desirable, from the point of view both of the saver and of the country, that as much as possible of those savings should be invested in some more or less durable form.