§ 4. Mr. Radiceasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he is satisfied with the growth in output.
§ Mr. HealeyThe latest figures show output growing at 1 per cent. a quarter. The House will share my satisfaction.
§ Mr. RadiceAt least we on the Government Benches welcome those figures. Will my right hon. Friend confirm, however, that they are in line with his Budget forecast?
§ Mr. HealeyYes, Sir. If anything, they are slightly ahead.
§ Mr. RidsdaleI welcome the increase in output, but is it not disturbing that our competitors, such as America, Japan and West Germany, have outputs far higher than ours?
§ Mr. HealeyI do not know how fast the German output will grow this year, but I notice that the German Economic Institute estimated that it would grow at about 2½per cent. On that showing, our rate of growth is likely to be higher than Germany's.
§ Mr. HealeySome of it is export, some of it is consumption, and. I am glad to say that a good part is capital growth. But, of course, the output is output in Great Britain—in other words, it is generated by the demand for British goods.
§ Sir G. HoweIs it not a fact that manufacturing output in the first quarter 1553 of this year was still below what it was during the three-day working week and subsequently below what it was in 1973, and that over the four years of stagnation that the Government have produced, other Governments have succeeded in doing very much better?
§ Mr. HealeyI pointed out that this year, on current figures, our rate of growth is likely to be somewhat higher than that of Germany, and also somewhat higher than that of France. Our inflation rate is already lower than that in France and may well be level with that in the United States. Considering the problems that this country has had to cope with in a world recession—problems aggravated by our inheritance from the Conservative Government—I think that we are doing quite well and I think that, when the time comes, the British people will take the same view.