§ The Chancellor of the Exchequer (Mr. James Callaghan)So much for the external capital account. I now turn to the Financial Statement.
I have made a reform here. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Barnet (Mr. Maudling) will recall that the last Government had been considering 274 for some time a change in the form of the Exchequer Accounts. Hon. Members will already have noticed that the Blue Paper has a new look. When they get the Financial Statement, which will be available at the end of my speech, they will find that I have set it out on new lines.
They will see that I have rearranged the contents and revised the tables so as to bring out in a clearer and more meaningful way the nature of the transactions involved in the Budget. A statement of the cash position of the Exchequer in the past year, and in the coming year, before and after the Budget changes in taxation, is now presented more simply than before. I have revised the concept of "the line" and have made it less prominent. It sometimes seemed to acquire an almost mystical significance. In order to correct the emphasis which was placed on Exchequer borrowing regardless of its purpose or composition, I have divided the loans from the Consolidated Fund to show separately the loans to industry, both nationalised and private, which are a considerable part of Exchequer lending. It can not be construed in quite the same way.
Secondly, I have taken a step forward by adding a new table which shows the economic or national accounts classification of central Government transactions. It thus makes clearer than before how the transactions which enter into the Budget are related to the economy as a whole. This will be of increasing importance as Government planning develops. For some years the Financial Secretary's Memorandum on the Estimates has classified Supply expenditure in this manner. The rest of the accounts are now brought in and the Financial Statement indicates how this new classification and the cash statement are tied together.
I hope that the Committee will welcome these changes, which shed a truer light on the transactions with which the Budget is concerned. The essential information previously available is still there; but it is presented in a more helpful manner with, in addition, the economic classification. I may add in passing that rearranging figures will not solve our budgetary problems, but 275 the new arrangement puts the problems into a more realistic framework, and at least does not make them appear worse than they are.
The tables in the Financial Statement are in no sense statutory, and their form can be changed by the Government at will; but it will still be necessary to publish statutory accounts in the old form in accordance with legislation passed nearly a century ago. It is obviously not convenient to perpetuate two forms of account, and if the revised form now used in the Financial Statement commends itself generally we intend to introduce amending legislation in due course to revise the form of the statutory accounts.