HC Deb 20 January 1970 vol 794 cc226-8
4. Mr. David Howell

asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer what is now his estimate of the rate of growth of gross national product for the current financial year.

Mr. Roy Jenkins

I see no reason to depart from the broad judgment that I made at the time of my last Budget about the likely course of the economy up to the middle of 1970.

Mr. Howell

Are we not now moving into the new year with a rate of growth of output which looks as though it may be less than 2 per cent.? Is not this a pitifully low figure by international standards? How can it be reconciled with the constant claim of Ministers, and particularly of the Prime Minister, that we would be combining rapid growth with a balance of payments surplus?

Mr. Jenkins

There are a number of ways, none of them wholly satisfactory, by which one can measure growth. There is the Index of Industrial Production, which is subject to a good deal of revision as time goes on, the National Income Statistics and other methods. I think that the rate of growth is not likely to be markedly different from the prediction I made in April of last year.

Mr. Dickens

May I press my right hon. Friend to go further on this point? Is it not a fact that the rate of economic growth of this country last year and this year was well below the average obtained by every other comparable advanced industrial nation? Will he bear in mind that we are now in the fourth successive winter with 600,000 people out of work? Is it not about time that my right hon. Friend got his priorities rather differently arranged?

Mr. Jenkins

It is a fact, and there is no point in disputing it, that the rate of growth of this country over a period from 10 to 15 years past has been slower than that of most other advanced economies. However, the rate of growth in 1968 was one of the best during this period, and in 1969 it will have been a little less good, but the two combined rates will, on the whole, represent one of the better, rather than one of the worse, two-year periods.

17. Mr. Tom Boardman

asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer which of the following countries, from information available to him from international sources, namely Canada, the United States of America, Japan, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Switzerland, Sweden and Turkey have shown a faster rise in gross national product than the United Kingdom since 1964 and which have shown a smaller increase.

Mr. Diamond

From 1964 to 1967, the latest year for which figures are available from O.E.C.D., all of the countries listed by the hon. Member showed a faster rise than the United Kingdom in gross national product at constant market prices. The same was true for the period 1958–64.

Mr. Boardman

As the United Kingdom appears at the bottom of the list, 19th out of 19, what importance does the Chancellor of the Exchequer attach to the rise in the gross national product as a measure of good economic management?

Mr. Diamond

My right hon. Friend attaches a great deal of importance to that and also to the level of income enjoyed in the various countries. The hon. Gentleman will be interested to know that the income per head of population in that year in the United Kingdom was greater than that in Japan, Austria, Greece, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal and Turkey, was broadly similar to that in Germany and Belgium, and was slightly below that in France.

Mr. Paget

Is my right hon. Friend aware, in spite of that, that if record unemployment, record interest rates and record bankruptcies, coupled with minimum expansion, are the symptoms of a healthy economy, some of us look back to a sick economy with some nostalgia?

Mr. Diamond

The list which my hon. and learned Friend has given to me is an interesting one. Were I able to ask a question—I am entitled only to answer questions—I would ask him to what he was referring.