HC Deb 12 July 1968 vol 768 cc983-1000

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Ernest G. Perry.]

3.24 p.m.

Mr. Norman Atkinson (Tottenham)

In welcoming the Report of the Cost-of-Living Advisory Committee, which was published last Wednesday, I should like to make one or two comments in the hope that my hon. Friend from the Department will be here to hear some of my comments about the conclusions which have been reached.

First, we should put on record that the Consumer Council is extremely gratified and grateful for some of the recommendations which have been made by the Advisory Committee. Indeed, most of the criticisms made by the Consumer Council and published by it last April are now incorporated in the recommendations which have been put before the House.

I welcome particularly the recommendations which have suggested that pensioners, where there are one or two members of a family, should have an index of their own. This is something for which on this side of the House we have argued for a long time, and we are grateful that it is now recommended to the Government. There are a number of other features about it which are also acceptable, and I hope that the Government will, before very long, incorporate the proposals made for the new structure.

Personally—and this is the view of other hon. Members on this side—I hope that they will very shortly go much further and start to reconstruct the whole of the index in a different way and base the new index on the cost of living rather than on prices. A point which strikes me about this is the fact that the Advisory Committee itself has recommended that the name be changed from that of the Cost-of-Living Advisory Committee to the Index of Retail Prices Advisory Committee. I hope that the Government will not pay attention to that recommendation because, like many other hon. Members, I hope that this will ultimately become a cost-of-living index and not, as it is at present, a prices index. There is a very great difference between the tables of the one kind and the other. The index of retail prices does not represent the cost of living.

I mention this because I believe this to be one of the most explosive issues in politics. Certainly, the Labour movement has suffered during the last three years from public criticism of the Government that the index does not represent truly the increases in the cost of living It is argued, and it is certainly borne out by our by-election experience, that the Government are seen to restrain wages while, at the same time, trying to encourage price increases. People can see prices increasing, the cost of services going up, and so on, and yet they feel restraint upon their incomes. This has led to tremendous criticism of the Government and, as has been seen at by-elections and on other occasions, the Government have suffered criticism for what, to be fair, is not altogether their responsibility, as I hope to prove in a moment or two.

None the less, people do not accept that the Index of Retail Prices has represented the true increases in the cost of living over the years past. They believe that this is a sort of brain-washing process. In general terms, it is referred to on the doorstep as "baloney". That is the sort of attitude that people have towards these figures. They have no confidence in them. If the Labour Government are to re-establish confidence in the work they are now trying to do they have somehow or another to re-establish confidence and understanding, and to present the figures in a way which people will believe to be a true reflection of what was going on.

For instance, if the Press were to undertake an opinion poll and were to put the question to people, "Do you believe that the Index of Retail Prices is true or false?" the overwhelming reply would be "It is false." This is borne out by many of the comments in letters to the Press which we so regularly see.

Now that my hon. Friend has arrived, I am about, as he will recognise, to get to some of the meat of the argument.

The Under-Secretary of State for Employment and Productivity (Mr. Roy Hattersley)

I beg my hon. Friend's pardon and I am grateful to him.

Mr. Atkinson

We must ask why people do not believe in the figures and why they have no confidence in them. I wish to show how people see the rises in the cost of living and how those rises affect their living standards.

An item which has frequently been put to me in correspondence is the cost of motoring. The weight given in the index to motoring is almost the same as that given to housing; there is just a one point difference, a one-thousandth difference. Almost half the people are motorists and are concerned about the effects of the Budget upon motoring costs. I take the example of the motorist who uses his car for travelling to and from work and occasionally for pleasure, using four gallons of petrol a week. Prior to the Budget the annual cost of doing so was about £75, taking the combined cost of road tax and petrol and excluding depreciation costs, and so on. As a result of the Budget, those costs have increased by 12 per cent., from £75 to £84 5s. per year.

This is shown in the index under "Transport" as a 4 per cent. increase for the reason that as all the inhabitants of the country are not motorists the figure is divisible. In the official index of the cost of living it appears as an increase of such an infinitesimal amount that it has almost disappeared. The motorist suffers a 12 per cent. increase in the cost of his motoring and sees nothing to show for it in the index, and, therefore, he says that the tables are "baloney", they are wrong, and do not reflect the rise in his cost of living.

An almost equivalent weight is given to housing in the index. Council tenants and private tenants in the London area, because of the new regulated rents which are being established, have suffered over the years on average a 20 per cent. increase in rent. The rising costs of building and the increase in the cost of money have affected local authorities by about a 20 per cent. increase. There is little to show in the index for these tremendously increased costs. People in London are suffering enormous rent increases, in some cases as much as £2 or £3 per week; in one case an increase of £5 10s. per week has been suffered as a result of a registered rent. Such increases represent an enormous percentage of people's incomes, yet there is little in the index to show that increases of this sort have taken place.

Those are two reasons why people reject the index as being representative of the increased costs which they are suffering in their everyday lives. It is why they believe that they are being conned with these figures, which have been so important in the consideration of wage negotiations until recently, and which have a tremendous bearing on internal costs.

I want to go back over a period of 30 years, to 1938. It is only by doing that that one can judge the accuracy of the tables and decide whether the conclusions to be drawn from the index in terms of the cost of living are correct. As a result of my own and other people's researches, there are some remarkable figures which disprove the accuracy of the index. Today, the £ is worth 5s. 6d. in purchasing power compared with 1938. Over the same period of 30 years, the wages of manual workers have gone up nearly 600 per cent., which would suggest that our living standards should have increased enormously over that time. However, the facts do not support that.

There have been tremendous advances in technology and medicine, and the quality of our life has improved over those 30 years. But, in hard economic terms, manual workers have had nothing like the increase in their standard of living that the index would suggest, and I want to give some brief examples to show that.

I have four which I think are representative, and I present them in this way because I oppose the economists who argue that the cost of living and living standards over the years can be measured by indices of this sort. That is grossly misleading, and I want to put an alternative point of view which also answers those who charge manual wage earners with being responsible for many of our economic problems. It is a charge which is not substantiated, and, although it is part of the prices and incomes policy as a whole, it is important that the point should be made on behalf of our manual workers.

The only way in which one can measure the living standards of people is by asking how long it takes a worker to earn enough to buy the product that he is making. There are some very good examples which indicate what has happened over the last 30 years.

I take, first, the case of a coal miner. In 1938, it took him exactly 1¼ hours to earn sufficient to buy 1 cwt of coal. According to information provided by the Coal Board, in 1968 it takes a miner exactly 1 hour and 20 minutes to earn enough to buy a bag of coal. His living standards have gone down relative to the commodity that he is producing.

Then I take a cabinet maker—and I am not speaking about my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister—but about a cabinet maker producing timber products. In 1938, it took a cabinet maker exactly a week to earn enough to purchase a kitchen cabinet. From photographs and specifications, I have been able to select a kitchen cabinet of almost identical construction which is produced today. It contains the same weight of timber and almost the same amount of work goes into it. Today, it takes a cabinet maker exactly a week to earn enough to purchase that kitchen cabinet. Therefore, the living standards of the coal miner and the cabinet maker are the same.

There is a revealing situation concerning the skilled building worker. In 1938, on average earnings, the skilled building worker had to work 100 weeks to earn sufficient to buy his own product—the average little semi-detached that we knew well all over the country in 1938. A skilled building worker today, who is doing well and having a good year, needs to work 150 weeks to earn sufficient to buy his own product. That is a remarkable situation when one measures living standards in this way.

I could go through a whole list of skilled trades, including engineers. One finds that it takes the same, or in some cases more, hours for the worker to earn sufficient to buy his own product. That is the only way in which we can measure the living standards of manual workers. It is not true, as the index suggests, that we have never had it so good. In that sense there is a tremendous difference.

Of all the skilled trades that I have examined, only one shows benefit to the worker through productivity. I refer to the electricity supply worker. His earnings per hour in 1938 enabled him to purchase 22 units of electricity. In 1968. based on an average consumption of 400 units per quarter, which is a very small amount but it illustrates the point, he is able to earn per hour the equivalent of 32 units of electricity. That is the only example, with new techniques and methods within a more sophisticated industry and society, where the worker is shown to be able, with one hour's work, to purchase more of that which he produces than in 1938. I think that the examples I have quoted condemn the accuracy of the index as we see it at the moment.

I now move on to the claim that the index should be based upon a regional pattern. Why is this so important to trade unionists? Why is it so revealing? The Advisory Committee has said that it may be that costs will ultimately prevent it from designing a regionally based index and prevent it establishing a cost of living index as distinct from the Index of Retail Prices. But I hope that the Government will have another look at that, because it is important that we get this right regarding manual workers. It has a distorting effect upon earnings in this country and it is changing the pattern. Although I represent a London constituency, it is fair to point out that London workers particularly have suffered as a result of this type of index which has influenced base rates throughout heavy engineering and other industries.

Why should it be on a regional basis? I have discovered some astounding facts which are not recognised. I have tried to take a representative sample of manual workers in industry and the kind of earnings that they get. I am sure that I will shatter a few illusions in presenting these facts.

The United Kingdom is divided into 10 economic regions. In all publications it is done in this way for obvious reasons. It has long been assumed that London industrial workers have always headed the list. They did so in 1938. But, because of the kind of retail indices that we use, the influence has always been against the interests of London workers.

What do I mean by that? If we take skilled time workers, including overtime but excluding piece workers, the hourly rates are somewhat revealing. The West Midlands are at the top of the table, with earnings at 11s. 6d. per hour. No. 2 is Wales—and no doubt this is a shattering thought for some of my Welsh hon. Friends—with earnings at 11s. an hour. Next comes the North of England, including the North-East, which more or less shares that position with London and the South-East, at 10s. 9d. Fifth is Scotland, at 10s. 7d. At the bottom, there is Yorkshire, where the figure is 9s. 4d. That table of earnings is similar to the earnings of manual workers in other industries.

It is time that we told the country that the streets of London are no longer paved with gold. We must tell the workers in Wales, in the North of England and in Scotland that there are no fortunes to be made in London. We must tell them that, on the basis of the figures which I have quoted, if they travel to London to find work they are in danger of their living standard going down. Workers throughout the country should know that before they drift towards the London area in search of higher earnings.

Those are remarkable figures, and they are quite astonishing when one realises that two so-called distressed areas, Wales and the North of England, are marginally higher than London. I am not suggesting that London is a distressed area. It is not. It has gained a lot from the masses of professional workers and office staff who have gained as a result of the tables, and whose living standards have increased proportionately more than those of manual workers.

It is suggested that the increased cost of housing, rents, purchases, transport, and so on, all fundamental factors in the cost of living, add up on average to about 1s. 6d. per hour. If we deduct this figure from the hourly earnings which I have mentioned, London is at the bottom of the table. Therefore, to get rid of this illusion about earnings, and particularly in London, it is necessary to have a different kind of index altogether and get away from the Index of Retail Prices as we know it.

I hope that the Government will take note of that, and that the Chancellor of the Exchequer will note it, too, because not only my right hon. Friend, but previous Chancellors, including those from the party opposite, have claimed that there is a need to disperse industry away from London to take the heat out of wages. If one includes the extra cost of housing, transport and so on, in the London area, one sees that earnings in London are at the bottom of the table in engineering time rates. The policy of dispersing industry from London is based on a false premise, and much of the responsibility for that lies with the type of index we use at the moment. It is necessary to look at this again, and to base it on regional earning standards. as recommended not only by the Consumer Council but by the trade unions.

We welcome the recommendations in the Report published on Wednesday. We congratulate the Committee on recommending a separate index for pensioners. I think that it can do well in influencing the level of pensions and giving us a much truer picture of the struggle which pensioners are facing. We congratulate the Committee, too, on its acceptance of some of the proposals made by the Consumer Council. Incidentally, there is a strong case for having on the Committee a member nominatetd by the Consumer Council.

I hope that my hon. Friend the Undersecretary will consider the possibility of having a direct representative and of strengthening the trade union representation. I understand that Mr. Sidney Greene, of the N.U.R., is the only trade union representative on the Committee. I hope, therefore, that there will be stronger trade union representation.

I hope, as a result, that the Government, having gone with the Committee so far in making the changes which have been proposed, will start to go in another direction and consider the possibility of a regional index based upon prices, taking greater note of the family the cost of living and not on retail survey and what has been done in that way, to get a different set of tables giving a much more accurate picture of what is happening to the cost of living throughout the country.

The time has come when we must stop kidding the people about the cost of living and what is happening to it. It is utterly wrong to go on repeating these stories which we know to be false. I believe, therefore, that the future of my party and of my Government rests in establishing confidence in these indices in such a way that people can see clearly that the figures presented represent an understanding of how the cost of living has increased over the last 30 years.

3.51 p.m.

Mr. William Molloy (Ealing, North)

I rise to make only a brief contribution to the debate which has been so ably initiated by my hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr. Atkinson). The House will agree that he has done an amazing amount of realistic research into an important subject. Although "Index of Retail Prices" is not a particularly attractive title, it nevertheless plays an extraordinarily important part in the lives of ordinary people.

The gravamen of the case so ably submitted by my hon. Friend concerning the important part played by such an index is that it is imperative that it should be accurate and true and should forecast as nearly as possible the true position. It must, therefore, follow that if the converse applies and it does not do that, a serious situation exists. The case made by my hon. Friend is well worthy of examination. I am sure that my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary is aware of the apprehension which is felt, particularly on this side of the House, about the whole question of the index.

Whilst naturally, I have an interest in the country where I was born, I am, like my hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham, a London Member. I always suffer from the fact that I am a Welshman with an Irish name representing an English constituency. The argument put by my hon. Friend has more effect in Greater London than anywhere else in the country. It is working-class Londoners who suffer most because of some of the errors in the Index of Retail Prices.

It might be difficult immediately to initiate a regional assessment of the index, because it must follow that to pursue it the whole way through would be a complicated business. Let me explain what I mean. This morning we were debating an important matter—the Supplementary Benefit (Determination of Requirements) Regulations, 1968. My right hon. Friend the Minister of Social Security sought leave to introduce provisions to increase those benefits. It is not unreasonable to assume that the Commission involved in that assessment had taken cognisance of the index.

It follows that if the index is true in some parts of the country, it is grievously in error for other parts of the country. To follow that argument to its logical conclusion, my right hon. Friend the Minister of Social Security should have advocated different increases for different parts of the country. I readily understand that many problems would be created in trying to erase what I believe to be a serious error.

I also understand that the Committee which examines the Index of Retail Prices is comprised of a number of people representing all walks of life. Sometimes when we on this side raise this point we are told that the workers are well represented on the board by the trade unions. This may be so in theory, but I think that there may be just as big an error in the theory of trade union representation as there is in the index itself. The probability is that decisions are made on a majority basis. I believe that when one is talking about the cost of living and the index workers should be in the majority to express their views, and I doubt whether that is the case in this instance.

I hope that the Under-Secretary will give full weight to what my hon. Friend has said. In essence we are talking about an instrument that exists and decides all sorts of things. It decides the basic pay in some industries in which the basic wage is determined by a wages council, and when it is arriving at its conclusion no doubt the wages council takes into account the index. I should also have thought that when some other Ministers are arriving at decisions they must take account of the index. Therefore, if the index is in error it must be put right.

I can understand the problem if it means putting the index on a regional basis. But if, for economic planning purposes, we divided Great Britain into 10 regions, that must be carried through every other aspect of economic life, including the index. Otherwise, one is not being fair.

My hon. Friend has submitted an able case, and I hope that the Under-Secretary will give sympathetic consideration to it and ensure that an examination is initiated so that we get a reflection of the true position in the index. The agony of the situation is that the degree of error that may exist hits more painfully and brutally the more one goes down the scale. It hurts those who are receiving least. Because of this, I ask the Under-Secretary to examine the proposals so ably outlined by my hon. Friend.

3.58 p.m.

The Under-Secretary of State for Employment and Productivity (Mr. Roy Hattersley)

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr. Atkinson) for raising this vitally important matter and giving the Government an opportunity to comment on his criticisms which result from his examination of the Index of Retail Prices. I also thank him for his courtesies to me during the first two or three minutes of his speech and particularly for his conclusion that, although he does not believe that the streets of London are paved with gold, the streets of the West Midlands may be. In four hours' time when I return to the bosom of my Birmingham constituents I shall quote his conclusion to them, but I can give him no assurance that they will believe either him or me.

I must say at the outset about my hon. Friend's analysis that I cannot agree with the main criteria that he used to judge the validity of our price estimation or with his comparison of what a man's weekly or hourly earnings would buy in terms of his own product five, 10 or 20 years ago and now. I have no doubt that my hon. Friend is right in saying that only in the electricity supply industry can the worker be sure that he can buy for his weekly wage more of his output now than he could 30 years ago.

I am equally sure that my hon. Friend would agree that, throughout industry, most working men can anticipate that their Thursday or Friday or end of the month pay packet will enable them to buy more of other people's output than they could 20 or 30 years ago. I am sure that he would not argue about that basic conclusion and would conclude that the analysis he made in these rather limited terms is not the most appropriate for deciding whether the indices are accurate or not.

Mr. Atkinson

But whatever the analysis—

It being Four o'clock, the Motion for the Adjournment of the House lapsed, without Question put.

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Pentland.]

Mr. Atkinson rose—

Mr. Speaker

Order. The hon. Gentleman had a long innings and I hope that he will allow the Undersecretary of State to speak.

Mr. Atkinson

I only intervene because this is a very important point, Mr. Speaker. It is no illusion that dependence of the standard of living in this country to a large extent revolves around the number of wives who are working. My hon. Friend must surely take into account the fact that workers can buy so much more than they could 20 or 30 years ago because of the extra income brought in by their wives in so many cases.

Mr. Hattersley

I will take that into account in the main part of my speech in which I shall ask my hon. Friend, and anyone else listening or who will read the debate, to draw a distinction between a Cost of Living Index and the Retail Price Index. This is the nub of the argument.

Having exemplified these areas of disagreement between us, I go on to accept at least one of the main points my hon. Friend made about the Retail Prices Index as it stands. There is no doubt that the accuracy of the index is widely doubted. In my view, that doubt stems from a misunderstanding of the job the Index is intended to do and from the necessarily complicated fashion in which that job is done. It would be wrong to pretend, however, that this scepticism— unwarranted in my view—about its validity is not to be found both inside and outside the House. If for no other reason I welcome this opportunity of trying to dispel some of that scepticism.

The April edition of Focus, the journal of the Consumer Council, crystallised much of the doubt and scepticism and because of the criticism and scepticism expressed there, my right hon. Friend the then Minister of Labour asked the Cost of Living Advisory Committee to examine the specific points the article made. Section VIII of the Report of the Committee deals with the criticism and it is important to establish the general status of the Index before we talk about the adaptation and extensions that my hon. Friends have urged on the Government.

The Index of Retail Prices is not a cost of living index. My hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham talked as if it was and then he went on to wish that it were. I remind him that it is not, and that it is not claimed to be so. There are many complications in compiling a cost of living index rather than an index of retail prices. Not the least is that a retail price index can be an objective and precise thing, the accuracy and validity of which can be demonstrated beyond question.

The criteria which go into the compilation of a cost of living index are, by nature, in part subjective and it is difficult to imagine the calculation of such an index which would not lead to all sorts of suggestions and criticisms that the very principles on which it was based, the very conclusions on which the statistics were calculated, were unjust, inaccurate and the result of a wrong subjective judgment.

The Index of Retail Prices seeks to be no more than its title suggests. It does not measure changes in total expenditure —the total amount spent in order to live or the effects of direct taxation, and so on. All it claims to measure is changes in retail prices of goods and services.

The goods and services included in its survey are generally representative. Great trouble is taken during the Family Expenditure Survey to ensure that this is so. The items are both representative of consumer spending and indicative of price movements in other related goods, and every effort is made to allow for changes in quality of goods within the index. It is a difficult calculation, but one which must be made if the index is to have real validity.

All these things make the index a complicated calculation and it is in part the complications which raise doubts about its accuracy and give rise to perhaps natural feelings that a system which is so involved must ipso facto be open to doubt. Yet it is these complications, the selection of goods, the weighting of items, the special calculation of housing costs, which make it as accurate an index as it is, and I emphasise again that, within the terms which it sets itself, the calculation of movements in a selected and representative list of goods, it is a very accurate index.

Indeed, the Report of the Advisory Committee, published on Wednesday, includes a considered and unequivocal judgment about the validity of the index. The Committee's judgment was that in its present form the index is working well and can be accepted with confidence as a satisfactory measure of changes in the average level of the retail prices of goods and services bought by a large majority of households and persons in this country. But that, of course, is not to say that the index is incapable of adaptation and extension. My hon. Friend will know that some of the adaptations and extensions which he has urged on the House are acceptable to that Committee and to my right hon. Friend. The Fourth Report of the Estimates Committee was sure that some extension was necessary and that the index would be made more useful if it were supplemented by periodical indications of changes in the cost of living for a number of groups.

In its report the Cost of Living Advisory Committee made judgments on exactly this matter, and the House will know that my right hon. Friend has accepted all these recommendations. In paragraph 48 the Report says that movements in the expenditure of pensioners are not necessarily different from the general movement of households simply because the consumption patterns of the two groups differ. However, in paragraph 50 it concluded that evidence supplied by my Department: lends colour to the view that the retail price index may not be a reliable measure of changes in the prices affecting the expenditure of pensioner households. As a result, the Committee recommends that special indices of retail prices should be compiled and published quarterly for one-person and two-person pensioner households. It also recommends that, after some experience has been gained of this type of limited group index, further consideration should be given to compiling indices for low income households with children.

The second group index to which the Committee referred and to which my hon. Friend referred also deserves examination. It is that point which he rightly made when he asked the House to consider the abnormally high costs of housing in London as compared with the rest of the country. It is that sort of point which the Committee examined when it considered the propriety and possibility of regional indices. The Committee concluded that the desirability of compiling and publishing retail price indices for regions and sub-regions could not be accurately assessed before we knew more about the technical problems involved.

I emphasise again that the technical problems of a calculation of this sort have paramount importance. I know very well the scepticism which always greets Ministers who say that they find an idea attractive, but that substantial technical problems are involved. However, my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, North (Mr. Molloy) put the point admirably and exactly when he talked about the necessity of creating an index which could be trusted and believed. If we are to produce an index which can be trusted and believed, it is essential that the technical problems be overcome, and if the technical solutions are not right, the index is not right, and if the index is not right, it neither justifies nor warrants belief, and the entire operation is, at best, useless and, at worst, dangerous.

If the technical problems cannot be overcome the index is meaningless. It is not enough to say that we need regional indices. We have to be sure that meaningful regional indices can be calculated. They would need to be, and I am sure that this is what my hon. Friend wants, regional price indices which do not show so much the movement of prices within any one region, but the relationship between the prices in any two, three or five regions.

It is important to know that from, say base year 1968, the cost of living in London or Birmingham or Sheffield has gone up by 5 per cent. over a three-year period. It is much more important to know how the cost of living fared in London as compared with Sheffield, Birmingham, Newcastle or Cardiff. The Advisory Committee agreed that statistics showing regional differences in family incomes do not reliably indicate differences of levels in prosperity unless allowance can be made for inter-regional price differences.

The Committee went on to emphasise the problem facing a worker about to change his job, yet unable to calculate what his real income might be in his new place of employment since he had no idea of what changes in retail prices he would face. The creation of reliable inter-regional indices to meet these needs poses formidable technical problems, set out in great detail in paragraphs 30 to 39 of the Report. To provide such figures would mean that a lower level of precision and more infrequent publication would have to be accepted for these special calculations.

This is not necessarily to say that such indices should not be calculated, but it emphasises the need to examine how accurate and valuable they would be. The report recommends that the technical difficulties should be examined immediately, and I am happy to tell the House that my Department, on the instruction of my right hon. Friend has already begun this examination of the possibility of regional indices.

In short, we recognise the force of my hon. Friend's argument that regional indices are desirable. On the other hand, the practical difficulties may mean that a calculation of such indices would at best be meaningless, and at worst inaccurate and misleading. We are anxious to provide whatever extra information we can. We will only provide it if we can underwrite its validity.

All informed observers, the latest and most important of which is the Cost of Living Advisory Committee itself, agreed that the general Index of Retail Prices is a reliable indication of the movement it seeks to measure. We are naturally anxious to emphasise and reaffirm that accuracy, remind the House and country that an objective Committee has examined its accuracy and underwritten it. We are equally anxious to make sure that any extension of the Index, any new indices based on the Index of Retail Prices should be similarly free from public criticism.

We should be able, as I can this afternoon, to reaffirm that whatever measurements of prices are given to the House and country, they can be underwritten by the Government as being totally accurate, totally meaningful analyses of the sort of movement they seek to measure.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at thirteen minutes past Four o'clock.