HC Deb 15 July 1946 vol 425 c855
67. Major Legge-Bourke

asked the President of the Board of Trade if he will give an estimate of the decline in the output per person employed in the export trade as compared with 1938.

Sir S. Cripps

Information is given in the Monthly Digest of Statistics about output and employment in most of the principal industries, including many which do a substantial amount of export trade. It is not possible to make any estimate of the extent to which output per person has changed compared with 1938 for export production taken as a whole, because no statistics were collected before the war of the number of workers engaged on export production.

Major Legge-Bourke

Is it not a fact that the increase in the number of people employed in the export industry is greater than the increase in the volume over 1938 figures?

Sir S. Cripps

As we have no accurate statistics of the number employed in the export industry in 1938, I cannot say.