§ Mr. D. E. Thomasasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he will publish in the Official Report the basis of his calculation that every worker in this country enjoys an additional income of something like £1,000 a year from the social wage.
§ Mr. Joel Barnett:The figure quoted corresponds to the figure of £19 a week which my right hon. Friend quoted in Leeds on 8th February. This was derived by taking an estimate of the total of public expenditure directly benefiting individals and their families in 1974–75, and dividing it by the number of people in the working population. The expenditure figures were those for programmes 7 to 12 in table 3.2 of the recent Public Expenditure White Paper (Cmnd 5879) together with food and other subsidies designed to restrain price increases to consumers.