§ Mr. Blakerasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer what plans he has for maintaining continuous records of the various statistics of invisible earnings which were published in the Bland Report; and whether he will publish these statistics each year.
§ Mr. Diamond:The Government will take into account the valuable statistics collected in the Report on "Britain's Invisible Earnings", when compiling their future balance of payments estimates; and the effect will probably be to add about £10 million per annum to our previous estimates of the net invisible earnings of the United Kingdom. Arrangements are being made with the assistance of industry and commerce to carry forward these statistical improvements into the estimates for future years. However, it will not always be practicable or necessary to publish the statistics in exactly the same form as in the Report, or to repeat every year all the special inquiries into the earnings of individual industries.
§ Mr. Blakerasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether he will in future publish gross figures of private invisible earnings and receipts.
§ Mr. Diamond:Gross figures of most invisible earnings and receipts are published each quarter in Economic Trends, and further detail is published each year in the Balance of Payments Pink Book. In some cases, however, such as merchanting, insurance and certain other financial services it is the difference between payments and receipts which represents a 433W transaction's contribution to the balance of payments, and this is recorded in the statistics.